Taiwan’s mutual funds hit NT$2.09 trillion (US$69.66 billion) last month, up 4.4 percent from one month earlier and staying above the NT$2 trillion mark for the fifth consecutive month as index fund sales more than doubled, a report by JPMorgan Asset Management Taiwan showed yesterday.
The total fund size rose its highest since June 2008, as investor confidence picked up after a pullback in financial markets worldwide in May, the report said.
Index funds totaled NT$227.04 billion at the end of last month, up 101.3 percent from one month earlier, as they better reflect markets’ performance, JPMorgan said.
“The markets appear to have emerged from noises linked to the geopolitical uncertainty in Ukraine, India and Thailand,” JPMorgan fund manager Liu Ling-chun (劉玲君) said in the report,
The sentiment may help boost global bourses going forward, as the world’s major economies remain on course for a sustained recovery, Liu said.
For the first six months, index funds gained 48.05 percent from the end of last year, the report said.
Funds focused on cross-border stocks also gained in popularity, with the balance rising 6.26 percent last month to NT$297.99 billion, the highest in 15 months, the report said.
Balanced funds reported an increase of 8.01 percent last month to a record NT$48.54 billion, the report said, as hybrid funds become a major driver of the local fund market, as they provide a mixture of safety, income and modest capital appreciation.
Balanced funds picked up 43.26 percent in the first half, next only to principal guaranteed funds and index funds in terms of growth pace, the report showed.
However, currency funds dropped 4.42 percent to NT$813.53 billion last month, while financial securitization funds dropped 5.38 percent to NT$372 million, it said.
They also weakened 1.06 percent and 15.07 percent during the January-to-June period, it said.
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