Investor confidence in the local bourse slumped to a new low this month, dragged down mainly by bearish views on both the domestic and global economic outlook in the face of skyrocketing crude-oil prices, according to a survey released by JF Asset Management Taiwan yesterday.
JF Asset Management Taiwan, part of JP Morgan Fleming Asset Management, initiated the investor confidence survey in July last year and has conducted the poll every two months since.
The overall investor confidence index plummeted 94.3 points this month, down from 106 points in July, said the survey, which polled 1,065 investors aged over 20 nationwide from Aug. 17 to Sept. 5.
The poll saw a high point in March this year with an index figure of 115.1 points.
JF Asset Management attributed the fragile investor confidence to a series of downward adjustments in the nation's economic growth this year, together with the local stock market's relatively weak performance amid soaring oil prices.
However, "When pessimism prevails, it is usually the end of bear market and the start of market rebound," JF Asset Management Taiwan vice president Judy Shih (石恬華) said in the report.
Looking ahead, this month's survey showed that 23.9 percent of respondents expected employment to improve in the next six months, down from 27.1 percent in July, and only 19.3 percent expected income to rise, down from 24.2 percent during the same period, while 90.9 percent of people expected consumer prices to continue climbing.
The consumer price index last month rose by 3.56 percent from a year ago, a record amount of growth for the last seven years, and the index has increased by 2.13 percent in the first eight months compared with the corresponding period last year, the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics said last week.
A total of 57.6 percent of investors said they had no intention of increasing investment in the next six months as only 40 percent of investors had reaped a profit so far this year, the poll said.
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