Fewer retail investors entered the local stock market in the fourth quarter of last year, while more institutional investors, foreign and domestic, pushed ahead after technical consolidation in the market ended, data compiled by the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) showed on Monday.
During the October-to-December quarter, retail investors accounted for 55.96 percent of the local market’s turnover, down from 59.01 percent in the previous quarter, the exchange said in a statement.
In contrast, foreign institutional investors made up 32.74 percent of the exchange’s turnover, up 1.97 percentage points from the previous quarter, while domestic institutional investors represented the remaining 11.3 percent, up 1.08 percentage points, the TWSE said.
Photo: Bloomberg
Although market sentiment improved after November, and the TAIEX rose 1,577.07 points in the final quarter of last year, retail investors favored safer investment approaches, with dollar-cost averaging investments gaining NT$442 million (US$14.1 million) to NT$9.78 billion last month from the previous month, the exchange’s data showed.
Dollar-cost averaging is the practice of investing a fixed-dollar amount on a regular basis, regardless of the share price. It has become more popular among retail investors investing in high-dividend exchange-traded funds or local stocks with stable dividends, the exchange said.
Among retail investors, 2,973 “big players” participated in the local market in the fourth quarter, down 523 from a seven-quarter high of 3,496 in the previous quarter, TWSE data showed.
A “big player” is defined as an investor who trades at least NT$500 million in shares on the TWSE in a single quarter.
The number of “midsized players” — or retail investors with quarterly turnover of between NT$100 million and NT$500 million — decreased to 23,604 last quarter from 28,597 the previous quarter, while that of “small players,” with quarterly trading of less than NT$100 million, also fell to 4.34 million from 4.51 million, the data showed.
The exchange’s latest data are seen as an important indicator of investor confidence in Taiwanese equities, after the TAIEX’s robust performance last year, with a full-year gain of 3,793 points, or 26.7 percent.
The TAIEX yesterday closed down 199.95 points, or 1.14 percent, in line with other regional indices as concerns about geopolitical risks and Taiwan’s new political landscape after Saturday’s elections overshadowed hopes for an early US Federal Reserve interest rate cut, Capital Investment Management Corp (群益投顧) said in a note yesterday.
The index has dropped 2.14 percent so far this year.
Shares of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) came under pressure yesterday after a report that Apple Inc is looking to shift some orders from the Taiwanese company to Intel Corp. TSMC shares fell NT$55, or 2.4 percent, to close at NT$2,235 on the local main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. Despite the losses, TSMC is expected to continue to benefit from sound fundamentals, as it maintains a lead over its peers in high-end process development, analysts said. “The selling was a knee-jerk reaction to an Intel-Apple report over the weekend,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to remain Apple Inc’s primary chip manufacturing partner despite reports that Apple could shift some orders to Intel Corp, industry experts said yesterday. The comments came after The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Apple and Intel had reached a preliminary agreement following more than a year of negotiations for Intel to manufacture some chips for Apple devices. Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院) economist Arisa Liu (劉佩真) said TSMC’s advanced packaging technologies, including integrated fan-out and chip-on-wafer-on-substrate, remain critical to the performance of Apple’s A-series and M-series chips. She said Intel and Samsung
POWER BUILDUP: Powered by Nvidia’s B200 Blackwell chips, the data center would support MediaTek’s computing power demand and business growth, the company said Smartphone chip designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday launched a new artificial intelligence (AI) data center with a maximum capacity of 45 megawatts to meet its rising demand for computing power required to develop new advanced chips for AI applications. The company has completed the first-phase computing power buildup at the data center in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼), providing 15 megawatts of capacity to support its research and development (R&D) capabilities, despite an industrywide shortage of key components, MediaTek said. Supply constraints have plagued a wide range of key components, including memory chips, solid-state drives, power supply units and central
TRANSITION: With the closure, the company would reorganize its Taiwanese unit to a sales and service-focused model, Bridgestone said Bridgestone Corp yesterday announced it would cease manufacturing operations at its tire plant in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口), affecting more than 500 workers. Bridgestone Taiwan Co (台灣普利司通) said in a statement that the decision was based on the Tokyo-based tire maker’s adjustments to its global operational strategy and long-term market development considerations. The Taiwanese unit would be reorganized as part of the closure, effective yesterday, and all related production activities would be concluded, the statement said. Under the plan, Bridgestone would continue to deepen its presence in the Taiwanese market, while transitioning to a sales and service-focused business model, it added. The Hsinchu
RSS