The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday announced it was moving up its plan to expand the daily stock trading fluctuation limit from 7 to 10 percent from Aug. 3 to June 1.
The wider limit is part of a slew of stimulus measures announced by commission Chairman William Tseng (曾銘宗) in February and is designed to raise liquidity for the nation’s equity market.
Analysts have been generally positive about the move, saying the expanded daily trading range would help improve market liquidity and boost transactional volume, leading to healthy development of the nation’s stock market in the long term.
Photo: Wang Meng-lun, Taipei Times
The move could also help boost the image of Taiwan as an internationalized market, as the 7 percent daily limit appears very strict compared with other developed markets, they said.
The commission said it took about two to three months for the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) and securities brokers to modify their trading systems to cope with the new policy.
“With the TWSE and other related institutions finishing their system upgrades and training plans, the commission is confident about pushing up the schedule and adopting the measure on June 1,” Securities and Futures Bureau Director-General Wu Yui-chun (吳裕群) told a news conference in Taipei.
Wu said that the measure is mainly expected to improve the nation’s stock trading mechanism, as most major economies in Asia have set their stock trading limits at a higher level, citing examples such as Hong Kong and Singapore’s 30 percent, the 15 percent limit in South Korea and a 10 percent limit in China.
The adjustment might help increase turnover by offering more room for liquidity, although a nation’s equity market depends on the economy and fundamentals for overall momentum, Wu said.
Daily trading limits for Taiwan depositary receipts, warrants and beneficiary certificates are to be adjusted to 10 percent on June 1 as well, the Financial Supervisory Commission said in a statement.
The Taiwan Futures Exchange also plans to raise the trading limit of stock index futures, share options and futures to 10 percent, the statement said.
However, in a bid to control margin lending default risk, the commission said related institutions would raise the minimum margin maintenance ratio from 120 percent to 130 percent on May 4, which in effect will lower the leverage for existing retail margin accounts.
Taiwan established a daily maximum positive and negative change limit of 5 percent in 1962, and increased the range to 7 percent in 1989.
The commission has occasionally reduced the trading range by half — to 3.5 percent — as a temporary measure when the market has faced sharp fluctuations.
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