Called $BZ bullish on Mar 6, 2026: $BZ rose 22% in 3 weeks.
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CIO/PM, Single Family Office | Global Public Markets | Former Sell-Side Equity Research
Cite asCryptoQuant has tracked the directional calls on JCI by @rickyho_1989 on X since Feb 2026: not yet scored on JCI (as of Nov 11, 2026).
Other assets covered (12)
4 JCI calls on record, a thin history.
Relative view by default: fewer than 30 JCI calls or days on record.
Sentiment timeline shows relative sentiment within this analyst's history. A perma-bull showing 8 bullish : 2 bearish in a bear market sets that as their baseline. If you notice any errors, claim @rickyho_1989 to submit corrections.
Called $BZ bullish on Mar 6, 2026: $BZ rose 22% in 3 weeks.
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383 Stocks Flagged for Concentrated Ownership. Where Has the Indonesia Stock Exchange Been All This Time? I genuinely find the latest announcement from the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) astonishing, because following the escalating scrutiny from MSCI over Indonesia’s market investability, IDX has now revealed that 383 listed companies will be classified as High Shareholding Concentration (HSC) stocks, including approximately 300 newly identified companies, after the exchange decided to expand its screening methodology to cover the entire listed market rather than limiting its review to companies above a certain market capitalization threshold. Let that sink in for a moment. Just last week, IDX removed 81 HSC stocks from the calculation of the Jakarta Composite Index (JCI), and now the exchange is preparing to expand the list to 383 companies, meaning that the number of flagged stocks has increased almost fivefold following a methodological overhaul. The newly identified companies represent approximately 6.16% of JCI market capitalization, according to IDX, and the exchange intends to exclude the broader HSC list from the benchmark once the necessary operational and data-vendor adjustments have been completed. Under the revised methodology, any listed company in which 10 shareholders or fewer collectively control at least 92.5% of outstanding shares will be classified as HSC, while the previous Rp5 trillion market capitalization screening threshold has been removed, meaning that the exchange is finally examining ownership concentration across the entire market. IDX has also eliminated the previous price-impact-ratio criterion, which means that companies no longer need to exhibit particular share-price movements before potentially being identified as having excessively concentrated ownership. I actually think these methodological changes are sensible, and frankly, long overdue, because ownership concentration is fundamentally a question of market structure and the distribution of beneficial ownership, not something that should be investigated only after a company’s market capitalization becomes sufficiently large or its share price begins exhibiting unusual behavior. But my biggest question is very simple: where has IDX been all this time? Why did it take escalating pressure from MSCI, deteriorating international investor confidence and the possibility of Indonesia losing its emerging-market classification before the exchange decided to screen its entire listed universe for concentrated ownership? If the infrastructure and ownership data necessary to identify these companies already existed, why was the previous surveillance framework restricted by market capitalization thresholds that could leave hundreds of smaller companies outside the screening universe? And if the previous methodology was insufficiently comprehensive, investors deserve to understand how the exchange concluded that the resulting benchmark was an adequate representation of Indonesia’s equity market, particularly when international investors were using that benchmark to evaluate market performance, liquidity and investability. To be clear, HSC classification does not automatically mean that a company is fraudulent, that its shares have been manipulated or that its reported free float is fictitious, because concentrated ownership can arise legitimately in family-controlled businesses, subsidiaries and companies with strategic shareholders. Nevertheless, a market in which hundreds of listed companies are sufficiently concentrated to trigger exclusion from its flagship index raises serious questions about whether reported market capitalization and headline trading activity adequately represent the amount of equity genuinely available to independent investors. This matters because the distinction between market capitalization and investable market capitalization is enormous. A company can theoretically command a multibillion-dollar valuation while only a small proportion of its shares is genuinely available for trading, meaning that relatively limited transactions can have a disproportionate influence on the quoted share price and, by extension, the apparent wealth of controlling shareholders. If a large number of companies exhibit this structure, the headline market capitalization of the exchange can become a poor proxy for the actual depth and capacity of the domestic equity market. The implications extend beyond individual stocks, because benchmark construction directly influences passive investment flows, institutional portfolio allocation and how international investors assess market performance. When highly concentrated companies enter major indices, their quoted valuations can influence benchmark weights even though the underlying shares may be difficult to accumulate or liquidate in meaningful size without materially affecting prices, creating a disconnect between the theoretical value represented by an index and the actual investable opportunity available to institutional capital. This is precisely why MSCI’s concerns about ownership transparency, free-float reliability and potentially coordinated trading deserve to be taken seriously, rather than dismissed as technical disagreements over index methodology. MSCI has already frozen certain index changes and opened a consultation on potentially reclassifying Indonesia from emerging-market to standalone-market status, reflecting concerns that extend beyond individual company valuations to the credibility and accessibility of the market itself. The problem is not merely that Indonesia has too many stocks with concentrated ownership. The problem is that the exchange is only now undertaking a comprehensive review after international index providers have begun questioning the integrity of the underlying market structure. There is also an uncomfortable implication for the historical performance of the JCI, because if a meaningful portion of the benchmark previously consisted of companies with highly concentrated ownership and limited genuine investability, investors have every reason to question how representative past index levels were of the broader market. Removing these companies may improve the quality of the benchmark going forward, but it does not retroactively resolve concerns about historical index composition, nor does it establish whether past price movements reflected genuine independent price discovery. And I think this is where the distinction between an index reform and an actual market reform becomes critical, because excluding HSC stocks from the JCI does not eliminate ownership concentration, improve their liquidity, establish the identity of ultimate beneficial owners or prevent potentially coordinated trading activity. These companies remain listed and tradable, and the underlying structural risks remain unless the exchange and regulators strengthen disclosure requirements, investigate suspicious ownership arrangements and enforce existing rules consistently. The revised HSC framework is therefore a necessary first step, but it should not be mistaken for a comprehensive solution. What international investors ultimately need is credible evidence that reported free floats correspond to genuinely independent and accessible shareholdings, that nominee structures are not being used to obscure concentrated beneficial ownership, that suspicious trading activity is investigated effectively and that enforcement applies consistently regardless of the identity or influence of controlling shareholders. For years, Indonesian equities have been promoted through narratives about attractive demographics, domestic consumption, commodity resources and long-term economic growth, yet those narratives become considerably less persuasive when investors begin questioning whether the underlying equity market provides sufficiently transparent ownership, reliable price discovery and adequate liquidity to deploy institutional capital. I have repeatedly argued that Indonesia’s equity risk premium should be structurally higher when investors face uncertainty over governance, liquidity, ownership transparency and the reliability of market prices, because these are not peripheral considerations that can simply be ignored when calculating fair value. They directly affect the ability to enter and exit positions, the probability of recovering invested capital and the discount rate that international investors should apply to future corporate earnings. The latest HSC announcement reinforces that concern, particularly because a market can appear large on paper while remaining remarkably shallow in terms of genuinely investable liquidity, and this mismatch becomes especially dangerous when foreign investors begin reducing exposure simultaneously. I welcome IDX’s decision to expand the screening methodology, because greater transparency and more representative benchmark construction are necessary if Indonesia wants to rebuild institutional confidence. But the timing raises legitimate questions about regulatory oversight, and the sudden expansion from 81 to 383 flagged companies suggests that the previous methodology was materially narrower than the one now considered appropriate. It should not require an international index provider threatening Indonesia’s market classification for the domestic exchange to begin examining ownership concentration across its entire listed universe. And while I would not label hundreds of companies fraudulent simply because they meet an HSC threshold, I find it deeply concerning that such a substantial part of the listed market is only now being subjected to this level of scrutiny. The real test will not be how many companies IDX removes from the JCI, but how effectively it establishes beneficial ownership transparency, improves genuine public share distribution, investigates questionable trading practices and demonstrates that market rules are enforced consistently. Because if 383 listed companies can suddenly be flagged under a more comprehensive ownership-concentration screen, investors are entitled to ask what else the previous surveillance framework has been missing. And perhaps the most uncomfortable question of all is this: would any of these reforms have happened with the same urgency if MSCI had never intervened?
View original →The Jakarta Composite Index ($JCI) appears to have increasingly limited capacity to absorb further foreign selling pressure. Domestic retail investors have helped cushion foreign outflows, but they cannot be expected to absorb institutional selling indefinitely. The concern is not simply the magnitude of foreign outflows, but the depth of domestic liquidity available to absorb them without significant price adjustments. When foreign institutions reduce exposure and local institutional demand is insufficient, retail investors effectively become the marginal buyers, often without the balance-sheet capacity to sustain that role. At some point, the market needs genuine institutional demand, not just retail investors repeatedly buying the dip. Otherwise, prices will have to fall sufficiently to attract new capital, particularly when rising bond yields, rupiah depreciation and concerns over market investability are already pushing Indonesia’s required equity risk premium higher. Retail investors can provide temporary liquidity. They cannot permanently replace foreign institutional capital.
View original →A few people have been asking about my current stance on the JCI and Indonesian equities, particularly following the recent market volatility. Our view remains unchanged. We maintain a bearish outlook on Indonesian equities and continue to avoid meaningful exposure to the market. I have outlined our investment thesis in detail below, but to summarize: When I put the pieces together, I see an Indonesian equity market facing higher global discount rates, a stronger US dollar, elevated oil prices, the possibility of further domestic monetary tightening, weakening middle-class purchasing power, growing pressure on bank asset quality, uncertain commodity margins and an unresolved MSCI investability problem. These risks are not isolated. They reinforce one another, potentially leading to higher funding costs, weaker corporate earnings, further rupiah depreciation and a structurally higher equity risk premium. That is simply not an environment in which I want to take significant exposure to Indonesian equities, regardless of how cheap valuations may appear on paper. Until the macroeconomic backdrop improves and there is convincing evidence of progress on market integrity and institutional credibility, I see little reason to change our positioning. You can read our full investment thesis below.
View original →There will be a significant reweighting of the Jakarta Composite Index (JCI) in November as BEI moves to exclude highly concentrated stocks from the index calculation, shifting more weight toward genuinely liquid, large-cap companies. Based on the proposed adjustments, the changes are quite substantial: $BBCA: 8.75% → 9.00% (maximum cap) $BBRI: 7.90% → 9.00% $BMRI: 5.70% → 7.10% $TLKM: 3.76% → 4.68% $BBNI: 2.08% → 2.60% Collectively, these five stocks would see their index weighting increase from approximately 28.2% to 32.4%, a gain of 4.2 percentage points. This is a welcome development because the JCI should increasingly reflect the performance of genuinely investable companies rather than being disproportionately influenced by highly concentrated stocks whose headline market capitalizations may not reflect their actual trading liquidity. The implications go beyond index composition. A more investable benchmark should improve the relevance of the JCI as a measure of Indonesian equity-market performance, while reducing the ability of a handful of tightly held stocks to distort headline index returns. There is also an interesting implication for local fund managers. If the benchmark becomes increasingly dominated by liquid, institutionally investable large-cap stocks, persistent underperformance will become harder to explain away by pointing to extraordinary price movements in illiquid conglomerate stocks. Of course, active managers can legitimately underperform because of sector positioning, risk constraints or investment mandates, and benchmark concentration does not automatically make stock selection easier. But over a sufficiently long period, if you consistently underperform a benchmark made up of stocks you can readily buy and sell, perhaps the problem is no longer the benchmark. It is your investment skill. Kudos to @IDX_BEI for taking what appears to be a meaningful step toward improving index quality and restoring market credibility. But this should only be the beginning. Now address the suspected wash trading, coordinated trading behavior, questionable free-float disclosures and opaque beneficial ownership structures that have undermined confidence in the Indonesian equity market. Changing index weights can improve benchmark construction, but it cannot substitute for credible market surveillance, transparent ownership disclosure and consistent enforcement. Fixing the index is a good start. Fixing the market is what ultimately matters.
View original →$JCI plunged 2.6% today, and we remain firmly bearish on Indonesian equities, as the combination of rising US Treasury yields, a stronger dollar, elevated oil prices, a weakening rupiah, potential monetary tightening and unresolved MSCI investability concerns continues to create an increasingly hostile environment for both corporate earnings and equity valuations. I know many Indonesian stocks look cheap on paper, but cheap valuations are not catalysts, particularly when foreign investors continue reducing exposure, earnings expectations face downside risks and the country’s equity risk premium is rising. At this stage, I struggle to identify any meaningful near-term positive catalyst capable of reversing these pressures, while the downside risks remain substantial, especially if global financial conditions tighten further and Bank Indonesia is eventually forced to raise interest rates to defend the rupiah. Our recommendation remains unchanged: avoid Indonesian equities for now, preserve capital and focus on AI, where we see stronger long-term growth potential and more attractive opportunities. There will eventually be a time to become bullish on Indonesia again, just as we did selectively earlier this year, but I do not believe that time has arrived. Remember, a market can look cheap and still become considerably cheaper.
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