Taiwanese investors showed much less interest in mutual fund products in the first quarter of the year as concerns over market volatility depressed their risk appetite, the local unit of JPMorgan Asset Management Ltd said yesterday.
The fund house’s latest regular savings plan (RSP) index, a gauge of investor interest in mutual fund products, stood at 46 during the January-to-March period, down for the third consecutive quarter, from 57 in the preceding quarter, the report said.
The steep decline corresponded with volatile equity markets worldwide during the first quarter, although the swings have since subsided.
“Chances of gains are high in the wake of drastic market corrections if investors can overcome their uneasy sentiment,” JPMorgan Taiwan vice president Alex Chio (邱亮士) said.
The index derives its value from quarterly surveys on the number of RSP depositors, amounts deposited and new RSP accounts, JPMorgan said.
A score above 50 suggests active demand for mutual funds, while a lower score indicates declining interest in such products.
The MSCI investment indexes have picked up by double-digit percentage points over the past five years, after various market upsets, such as the tapering off of the US central bank’s quantitative easing, Europe’s debt problems and the global financial crisis in 2008, the report said.
Talks of a slow sales season for technology products have recently weighed on local share turnover, Chio said.
In the first quarter, Taiwanese spent an average of NT$6,887 a month buying fund products through regular savings, down 4.8 percent from the preceding quarter, the report said.
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