The TAIEX moved marginally down on its last trading day of the year, after rising 23.7 percent over the past 12 months, the third-largest increase for a single year, Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) data showed.
The index initially hit an intra-session high at 18,291.25 points yesterday, but gradually fell before closing down 0.16 percent at 18,218.84, with turnover of NT$263.167 billion (US$9.5 billion), the data showed.
Starting at 14,720.25 points on Jan. 4, the TAIEX advanced 3,486.31 points this year, compared with an increase of 2,735.39 points last year.
Photo: CNA
The index registered its highest annual increase of 4,505 points in 1989 and the second-highest in 2009, when it advanced 3,596 points, exchange data showed.
The TAIEX stood above 17,000 points on 130 of this year’s 244 trading days and above 18,000 points for five days, Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) data showed.
Average daily turnover surged 88.7 percent from a year earlier to NT$476.3 billion, while the number of investors with trading accounts rose 6.5 percent, from 11.23 million at the end of last year to 11.96 million on Nov. 30, FSC data showed.
The TAIEX outperformed its Asian peers this year, with Japan’s Nikkei index gaining 5.33 percent, South Korea’s KOSPI index rising 4.17 percent, Singapore’s Strait Times index gaining 10.35 percent and China’s Shanghai Composite Index rising 3.57 percent, commission data showed.
This year’s rise in the local index is among the highest in the world, including the Philadelphia semiconductor index, which rose 43.7 percent; Standard & Poor’s 500 index, which advanced 29.5 percent; France’s CAC40, rising 28.1 percent; and the NASDAQ Composite, advancing 24.2 percent.
“Local stocks continued to move upward, despite foreign institutional investors’ net sale of NT$453.9 billion of shares this year,” PGIM Securities Investment Trust Enterprise Co (保德信投信) fund manager Bevan Yeh (葉獻文) said in a statement yesterday.
It was the third-highest net sale by foreign investors after NT$539.4 billion last year and NT$470 billion in 2008, he said.
PGIM holds an upbeat outlook for local stocks next year on the back of the nation’s strong exports, Yeh said.
SinoPac Securities Co (永豐金證券) said that foreign institutional investors bought a net NT$84.8 billion of local shares this month, about 30 percent of which were Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) shares.
Local equities are likely to continue attracting investors next month on the back of strong corporate fundamentals, SinoPac said in a statement.
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