☕️ Analysis: Young voters chose BN, high turnout in Chinese areas for Johor elections

1. MARKET SUMMARY 📈

2. NUMBERS AT A GLANCE 🔢

47% – Argentina’s Lionel Messi has walked for that much of his time at the World Cup this year, marking the highest percentage of any outfield player. Yet he has managed to create more while moving less, with 33 shots and 21 chances created, the most combined since Diego Maradona in 1986. In keeping with his shift to creating more while moving less, he also covered just 8.2km per 90 minutes, the shortest distance of all Argentine outfield players to have featured for over 20 minutes at the tournament. He also averaged 2.7 sprints per match, compared to 5.3 just four years ago. This shift is part of 39-year-old Messi adapting to stay ahead in football as he ages.

RM4.2 mil – Prior to their match against England at the World Cup, the Mexican team were presented with luxury Rolex watches worth USD1 mil (RM4.2 mil), but these were later returned over concerns that the gifts breached tournament betting rules. The Swiss-made watches were gifted by American YouTuber Stephen “SteveWillDoIt” Deleonardis after he reportedly won USD2 mil from a bet on Mexico defeating Ecuador in the round of 32. The surprise gifts were initially celebrated, with the team even hoisting Deleonardis into the air in celebration. However, the Mexican Football Federation later instructed the players to return the watches to avoid any potential conflict with tournament rules. Mexico were kicked out of the tournament by England, who won the match 3-2.

3 minutes 42.66 seconds – That was the time clocked by Great Britain’s Josh Kerr when he took his turn at the mile run at the Diamond League event in London. The time recorded was a new world record, which beat the previous record set by Moroccan Hicham El Guerrouj by 0.47 seconds. Kerr had previously announced his plan to break the record back in Mar. Before the record-breaking time, Kerr’s personal best was 3 minutes 45.34 seconds, which he recorded at the Prefontaine Classic in 2024. His performance in the event places him well ahead of Paris 2024 1500m bronze medallist Yared Nuguse, who finished in 3 minutes 45.69 seconds, and fellow Brit Jake Heyward, who took third place at the event with a time of 3 minutes 46.73 seconds.

3. IN MALAYSIA 🇲🇾

Network School Controversy
Network School ordered to stop operations
The scrutiny surrounding Network School in Forest City has intensified, with the Iskandar Puteri City Council (MBIP) ordering its operations to stop after finding breaches of its business licence conditions. Johor Menteri Besar Onn Hafiz Ghazi said inspections found the company was running educational activities from premises licensed as business offices, while another location was operating without a valid MBIP business licence.

Authorities also issued a notice over non-compliant signboards and said further enforcement action could follow if additional violations are uncovered. Onn Hafiz added that matters involving foreign nationals linked to the school remain under the Home Ministry's jurisdiction, with the state government urging a swift decision on the case.

Immigration tracking 19 linked to Network School
The investigation into Network School in Forest City has taken another step, with the Immigration Department now locating 19 of 430 foreign visitors linked to the project. 210 of the visitors are still in Malaysia, while 201 have already left the country. The movements of the remaining 19 cannot be verified, and authorities are investigating whether they left the country illegally or are still in Malaysia. So far, immigration checks have found no evidence of passport misuse, with those inspected found to be travelling on valid passports issued by their respective countries. Investigations involving the Home Ministry, police and other agencies are ongoing.

INSAP: Johor voters rewarded performance
A new analysis by the Institute of Strategic Analysis and Policy Research (INSAP) suggests the 16th Johor state election challenged several long-held assumptions about Malaysian voting behaviour. Based on Election Commission data from 15 MCA-contested seats covering 1,541 polling streams and more than 860,000 voters, INSAP found younger voters gave Barisan Nasional stronger support than older voters in most polling centres analysed, while returning outstation and postal voters also shifted towards the coalition instead of Pakatan Harapan.

The analysis also found turnout rose the most in predominantly Chinese areas, disputing claims that Chinese voters stayed home. INSAP said the results suggest Johor voters increasingly judged governments by their performance on issues such as the cost of living, jobs and the economy, rather than long-standing political loyalties. The full INSAP analysis is available here: INSAP's Johor election analysis.

Stratus Global more than doubles on debut
Stratus Global Holdings got off to a flying start on Bursa Malaysia, with its shares jumping from the IPO price of 80 sen to RM1.96 at the opening before closing at a record RM2.11 on its first trading day - that’s up 163.8%! More than 137 mil shares changed hands, giving the Penang-based factory automation firm a market value of RM2.64 bil.

The strong debut follows a retail IPO that was oversubscribed by 129 times. Another notable point is that, unlike some listings, existing shareholders did not sell any of their shares through the IPO, meaning the RM285 mil raised will go entirely towards expanding production facilities, funding research and development, supporting overseas expansion, and providing working capital.

Azam denies role in brother's RM178.29 mil contract
Former MACC chief commissioner Azam Baki has denied having any involvement in a RM178.29 mil contract awarded to Integriti Padu Sdn Bhd, a company partly owned by his brother, Nasir Baki. Azam said he had no knowledge of the award and that his brother's business dealings were separate from him. The contract, awarded by the Transport Ministry, is for the development and operation of the road charge and vehicle entry permit system at the Malaysia-Singapore border.

Nasir was also at the centre of the 2022 controversy involving Azam's share trading account, after Azam said his brother had used the account to purchase shares. The latest report comes as Azam is also facing scrutiny over his shareholding in Velocity Capital Partner, while authorities continue investigating separate allegations involving a group of businessmen dubbed the "corporate mafia", both of which he has denied.

ENT specialist jailed for sexually assaulting patient
An ENT specialist at a private hospital has been sentenced to seven years in prison and seven strokes of the cane after being found guilty of sexually assaulting a male patient on seven occasions. The Sessions Court found Mohd Safwan Mohd Soffian, 42, had assaulted the victim, who was 11 and 12 years old at the time, in his consultation room between Sept 2022 and Apr 2023.

He received five years' jail and one stroke of the cane for each of the first six charges, and seven years' jail and one stroke for the seventh charge. The prison terms will run concurrently from Jul 19, with the court also ordering two years of police supervision. Which doctor? Go on X, type the name and you can see where he worked before.

4. AROUND THE WORLD 🌎

Southeast Asian scammers are the new Nigerian princes
Remember those days when a “Nigerian prince” would send you an email, claiming that he is on a quest to restore his kingdom and he needs a donation from you? Nowadays, that Nigerian prince is probably in search of true love on the internet. Their words are pure honey. Promises of eternal love and romantic stargazing. And in order to achieve that, they need a donation from you. Throw in some cryptocurrency investment scheme, and you have a well-packaged scam that seems too good to be true. Southeast Asian scammers in Cambodia and Myanmar are perfecting the Nigerian prince scam tactics and are raking in a whopping USD114 bil (RM466.4 bil) in 2025 from their operations in Asia and Oceania. These figures have tripled from 2023.

The biggest losses came from China, South Korea and Taiwan, with investment fraud being the main scam tactic used. What’s more worrying is that the scale of their operations is truly international, with scammers from over 80 countries. And many of them are trafficked illegally by criminal organisations. With AI and cryptocurrencies, these organisations are involved in child and human exploitation, drugs, and even real estate investments. They now resemble multinational corporations, operating across different countries and employing the franchise model for aggressive expansion.

Here’s a quick look at which country suffered the most from a UN report:

Of course you need to pay for copyright, Anthropic
Are AI companies the new pirates in the online age? That’s what a group of authors and book publishers seem to think of Anthropic when they sued the AI company over copyright infringement. Anthropic has agreed to pay USD1.5 bil (RM6.13 bil) to them, which equates to about USD3,000 per work across 500,000 works. Can you imagine this? Anthropic downloaded books from pirate sites like Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror and used them to train its AI model. It also purchased the books and scanned copies to train. Judge William Alsup ruled that Anthropic’s actions of using books it purchased to train its AI model were considered ‘fair use’, and it was fine. The problem lies in using pirated books. So, the issue was piracy and storing the pirated books in its systems. Anthropic, realising that this was probably not going to go down well, settled with the group of authors and book publishers.

So, the big question now is how this will apply to other AI companies such as Google, Meta, Midjourney, and OpenAI? They are also facing copyright lawsuits.

 Here’s where it gets interesting. AI models are actually also mining other AI models for output. In the industry, this is called ‘distillation’. Anthropic complains that bots are constantly crawling its AI model to improve on their own model. When Anthropic does it to other websites, books and sources of information, they call it as ‘fair use’. But not when other AI models use their output. The line for ‘fair use’ is getting increasingly blurred as even AI companies are finding that other companies are using their output as ‘fair use’. 

This reminds us of that meme here.

Investments/Trading
24/7 trading in London?
Sounds like a recipe for 24/7 anxiety and panic attacks. The London Stock Exchange, which is already dubbed the market that never sleeps because of its ideal time zones that coincide with every major market from the US to Japan, wants to implement 24/7 round-the-clock trading by the first half of 2027. This will be housed in a new exchange that operates independently from the main market and will only offer exchange-traded funds and other funds that track the British and US markets in the initial stages. It will operate from 5 pm to 7.30 am London time, with a 30-minute pause between 6 pm and 6.30 pm to apply end-of-day processes. Other competitors such as cryptocurrency exchanges are not bound by the 9-to-5 grind, while Nasdaq also plans to extend its trading hours to 23 hours on weekdays by Dec 2026. CME has already rolled out 24/7 trading of crypto futures options in May 2026.
The irony is that at the end of the article, this was mentioned:
LSE could not immediately be reached for comment outside regular business hours.

South Korea’s retail traders get wiped out by margin calls
Live by the margin, die by the margin. South Korean retail traders who went big on leveraged trades on its own chip and AI champions - mostly SK Hynix and Samsung - saw their margin accounts being called. A leveraged trade means that you can buy or sell with your own money and money loaned from your broker. Imagine that you invested USD1,000 (RM4,089) and your broker spots you another USD3,000. If the investment gains by 10%, you would have profited USD100 + USD300, making this a very lucrative investment for you. However, you just need to not make losses. If you do, you will have to repay USD300 to the broker and suffer a total loss of USD400. The broker may issue a margin call and demand that you deposit more funds or close your position and demand their money back. That’s exactly what happened to South Korean retail investors when shares of SK Hynix and Samsung suffered a brutal drop last week as the AI investors were spooked. The KOSPI index, which is heavily weighted by the AI companies, sank by 30% from its peak a month ago.
Learn: Understanding Margin Financing

Here’s a revealing statistic on how bad this is:
According to Goldman Sachs, more than 1.2 mil leveraged retail trading accounts in South Korea triggered margin calls as ​of Jul 13, with an estimated 320,000–360,000 accounts fully liquidated. Goldman's strategists reckon this means around one in 30 adults in the country, or 3.4% of the adult ⁠population, have received margin calls.

The authorities are worried about this as they have instituted tougher rules for leveraged trading. Investors who want to do so need to put up a minimum of KRW30 mil (RM82,958.29) to trade single-stock leveraged ETFs, 10 times the amount of KRW3 mil previously. There is, however, a silver lining. Investors who have a longer-term investment are still seeing gains with the KOSPI index up by 55% for 2026 and 75% for 2025.

In the words of the late legendary investor Charlie Munger - smart men go broke 3 ways: liquor, ladies, and leverage. His business partner, Warren Buffett, claimed that the first 2 Ls were added for the L sound.

5. FOR YOUR EYES 📺

1. Science explains why food wrapped in banana leaves is 99x better.

2. Breaking down the numbers to host World Cup in Malaysia. Makes sense or non-sense? Of all concerns raised, we fear most the 4th slide.

3. Lindung24 - AuntyHR on whether to opt out or not.

4. Silent cheer during Spain v Argentina match. Respect shown, as compared to Messi & Co.