The authorities should certainly examine the reasons for the lacklustre participation in our local stocks, as well as the lack of trust and confidence retail investors have in the financial services industry (How to bring back the retail investor?; May 14).

There needs to be enough professional personnel to assist in strictly scrutinising and monitoring the activities of all companies seeking to be listed on the local exchange.The risk of losing one's total investment increases when this is lacking.

My experience as an S-chips investor was a bad one.

Investors who lose their entire investments will definitely be discouraged from participating in future launches.

It is always easy to come up with many new products.

But the lack of legislation to take listed companies, especially foreign-based ones, to task when improprieties are found is what the Securities Investors Association (Singapore) needs to work on in order to woo back investors.

Francis Heng