"Malaysian Nate Silver" suspended by Bank Islam?

I wrote before about Nate Silver's popular book "The Signal and the Noise", and ended with:

"Where is the "Malaysian Nate Silver" predicting the coming elections, both overall and per state .....?"

Apparently, there is a "Malaysian Nate Silver", his name is Azrul Azwar Ahmad Tajudin, and he is chief economist of Bank Islam:

In a report by The Straits Times, Azrul Azwar’s calculations found that one of the most likely scenarios was that the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition would likely win only between 97 and 107 of the 222 parliamentary seats, which are insufficient to form the next administration.

But the result would also mean that PR will only gain a shaky hold over Parliament, far from the supermajority once enjoyed by its rival.

The two other likely scenarios reportedly presented by Azrul Azwar was that there would be a narrow win for BN and a bigger win for PR.

Azrul Azwar had taken into account factors such as race and demographics.

He had also forecasted that under the most likely scenario of a narrow win by PR, a fallout would result, with the stock market set to respond in a “knee-jerk” fashion as well as an extended period of perceived instability.

He also did not rule out the possibility of “economic sabotage” by businesses and the civil service that are aligned with BN.

The above according to an article on The Malaysian Insider. It was first highlighted in The Straits Times, an article that I indeed read, but disposed since it didn't strike me as anything extraordinary. It was presented at an economic forum, I haven't visited many of those, but I do visit regularly investment forums and predictions regarding election outcomes are considered to be very normal.

Bank Islam, Azrul Azwar's employer, suspended him. Not for doing a lousy job, but for "being involved in political activities". Rather remarkable, if you want to predict the Malaysian economy, you have to take into account the level of business, which is (unfortunately) so much interwoven with politics.

Would he have been suspended if he had predicted a win for BN? I doubt it, since I have read many such predictions with no action being taken by their employers.

We have to wait what will happen, may be Bank Islam will wait for the elections to happen, and when PR wins, Azrul Azwar will be reinstated again?

For me, as a Westerner and a mathematician, making predictions based on mathematical models, it all sounds pretty unbelievable that one can be suspended for exactly doing that.

Did Astro employees buy shares on margin? (2)

Received an excellent comment on the previous posting from MH Fong:

Agree with your assessment, specifically on the moral hazard element of it. There is no good reason for Astro to bail out its staff who, in this case, must be treated as ordinary shareholders.

If they do want to compensate them for the decline in share price, they must do the same for all shareholders, e.g. capital repayment, special dividend, etc. (And no, I swear I'm not an Astro shareholder).

Furthermore, I personally have issues with companies allotting IPO shares to employees; if you really want your staff to benefit, give them options instead, which at least gives them some protection from the swing in the market.

I don't think there should be a witch-hunt about who's selling down though. I disagree with positions that suggest that market volatility is a bad thing especially in a market like Bursa that is often criticised for its poor velocity.

Two things come to mine about Astro: It was overvalued and investors suspect that much and two, Astro decided against a Greenshoe, which is fairly common for IPOs of this size. I think it was a bad decision (a bad bet, if you will) rather than anything conspiratorial to forego the Greenshoe.

Finally, one last comment on the giant IPOs pushed through this year. I suspect that the decline in Astro's share price is indicative of a a new element of uncertainty creeping into share trends post-IPO, even for blue chips. And here's where I'll throw in a shameless plug for Nate Silver's brilliant book, The Signal and The Noise. Great stuff about predictability.

The book can be found on Amazon's website. I am afraid I have not yet read the book, although it is very much in my alley, making predictions and putting my money where my money is, is basically what I do.

Nate Silver's blog FiveThirtyEight became rather famous when it predicted the latest US elections accurately.

Where is the "Malaysian Nate Silver" predicting the coming elections, both overall and per state .....?