The nation’s investor confidence index fell 4.2 percent to 125.6 points last month from three months earlier, although the market sentiment remained high during the post-crisis period, JPMorgan Asset Management Taiwan Ltd’s (摩根富林明投信) latest survey found yesterday.
Of the survey’s six sub-indices polled last month, only the sub-index of Taiwan’s political environment and cross-strait relationship saw an increase of 4.5 percent to 129.3 points from the previous survey in January.
The global economic climate sub-index, meanwhile, saw the biggest decline — 8.9 percent to 124.0 points — followed by a decline of 7.4 percent in the Taiwan stock market sub-index to 124.9 points in the latest poll.
“In terms of global economic outlook, Taiwanese investors were rattled by negative news recently such as Greek’s debt crisis, China’s monetary tightening and fraud charges against Goldman Sachs,” JPMorgan said in a statement yesterday. “But the investment sentiment had not yet [fallen] to the low levels [it had reached] during the financial tsunami period.”
MAKING MONEY
The local bourse has seen great fluctuations recently, with the TAIEX declining 7.43 percent so far this year.
Against this backdrop, the survey found the number of investors making money from the local stock market declined 6.2 percent from the previous survey, while the number of those losing money increased 4.1 percent.
Moreover, most respondents believed that property prices would rise in the next six months and remained skeptical about the improvements in both job opportunities and individual income over the next six months, which added extra pressure to the country’s economic outlook in the short term, JPMorgan said.
This explained why the survey showed 58.8 percent of respondents believed the outlook for Taiwan’s investment environment and sentiment would improve over the next three years, down 4.3 percentage points from the previous poll in January.
The 58.8 percent level was also the lowest in two years, JPMorgan said.
ECFA
“While the country’s possible inking of an economic cooperation framework agreement [ECFA] with China is likely to increase the investment value of the local stock market, it would take a while for that potential to materialize,” it said.
Even so, Taiwan remained in the minds of investors in the JPMorgan survey when they were asked if they would enter the local stock market or load up on more shares.
In terms of geographical locations, the survey’s results found that investors were most interested in China (36.1 percent), followed by Taiwan (24.2 percent), Brazil (23.1 percent) and India (22.2 percent).
In general, JPMorgan said that “natural resources and “emerging markets” were the two major categories favored most by investors.
The survey was conducted from April 14 to April 22 among 3,395 people in Taiwan above 20 years old.
Of the respondents, 1,071 had experience in trading shares, buying mutual funds and investing in real estate within the past 12 months.
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