How Tong Kooi Ong is attempting to break Bank Negara and crash the RM
Exposing The Truth of Malaysians
An owner of a prominent news media empire is casting undue influence on the financial and political state of Malaysia for his own personal monetary gain.
Sources within Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) revealed that Tong Kooi Ong, the owner of the Edge Group and The Malaysian Insider has taken a USD1.4 billion short position on the Ringgit through a proxy. The first transaction took place in August 2014 and subsequent short positions have been taken leading up to January 2015.
Tong Kooi Ong is no stranger to investments, notably during the last financial crisis, Tong took a similar short position with Rashid Hussein which resulted in a significant gain.
According to the source, Bank Negara Malaysia and the securities commission are monitoring Tong closely.
How shorting a currency works:
A short position on the ringgit is essentially a bet that the ringgit will fall. The Malaysian ringgit will be traded for USD and if the ringgit reduces in value, the investor will make money when they buy back the ringgit at its lower value to cover the short position.
When a currency is being devalued, the central bank will step in to release reserves to balance the value of their currency against the currency that it is being most actively traded against.
In the Malaysian scenario as the RM drops, BNM will step in to buy RM in exchange for their USD reserves.
Speculators who short the currency will exploit this by taking a loan in Malaysia or using their own funds in RM to trade for the USD. The goal of which is to trade the RM for USD until the central bank is out of reserves so effectively the currency will crash.
The investor will then go back to the Bank that they initially borrowed money from and will convert it into RM to pay back the loan. The profit would be made off the gain that the USD receives against the RM. As the loan was made in RM and the currency has crashed the investor would have to trade less USD to pay back that initial RM loan.
Media and Mass propagation
With access to his media empire that spans from radio to print and online, Tong Kooi Tong is able change public sentiment through the mass distribution of articles that create doubt amongst the general public about the state of the Malaysian ringgit.
