The most basic thing an investor does before investing in any stock is to read the company's annual reports.

And to a prudent investor, reading the latest annual report is not enough. It is a given for a serious investor to read at least the past three years' annual reports to understand the company, its business, its track record and its financial statements.

Some time back, SGX allowed investors to download the past few years' annual reports of a listed company on its website. Now, this is no longer the case.

I called SGX, and was told I must pay $10 for each year's annual report in soft copy. The reason given was that the reports are archived, and the charge is imposed to cover the cost of manpower to retrieve those reports.

This means it is possible to get only the latest annual report online, and others take time, effort, money and phone calls.

I also invest in Hong Kong, Indonesia, South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand and the United States. All these places make annual reports available online and free. Most go back as far as five years. There is no need to pay, make phone calls or hassle the stock exchange to get them.

Perhaps SGX can look into this very basic problem, and not expect retail investors to take the plunge by looking at a single annual report.

No sane investor would do that.

Eric Kong Hong Lim