Taiwan's future market is getting competitive

Taiwan's stock market becomes more and more important and popular in the world. Many international investors keep pouring their money in Taiwan because they know Taiwan's economic environment is getting better and better. Like them, all people in Taiwan should also have faith in the government. The future is still bright, as long as we believe in Taiwan!

Taiwan to introduce dollar-denominated futures

2006-03-28 / BLOOMBERG /

The Taiwan Stock Exchange and Taiwan Futures Exchange yesterday signed contracts with Morgan Stanley Capital International Inc. to jointly compile a Taiwan futures index and introduce three U.S. dollar-denominated futures products.

The three sides signed the contracts in Taipei yesterday, aiming to strengthen the competitiveness of Taiwan's futures market, they said in a joint briefing.

"The move will help bring in more foreign investors to stimulate Taiwan's futures market and make it a more internationalized market," Financial Supervisory Commission Chairman Kong Jaw-sheng said in Taipei.

By the end of 2005, foreign investors accounted for 3.2 percent of the transactions on Taiwan's futures market, far behind the 18 percent in the Taiwan stock market, leaving room for improvement, Kong said. Foreign investors also accounted for 32 percent of business on Taiwan's stock market in terms of total value, he said.

Taiwan Futures Exchange today introduced Taiwan index futures, MSCI Taiwan index options and gold futures, all of which are U.S. dollar-denominated, it said in a statement. Gold futures will become the exchange's first commodity product.

The exchange from today will also allow trading for non-hedging purposes by foreign investors, abolishing previous rules that restricted foreign investors to futures trading only for hedging purposes, the statement said.

The Financial Supervisory Commission on August 16 denied a report that Morgan Stanley Capital International may remove the island's stock market from its global indexes.
The Economic Daily News reported that day that Morgan Stanley may remove Taiwan stocks because of disputes over the pricing of its MSCI Taiwan index futures. The newspaper refused to say where it had gotten its information.

Removal could have seen falls for some prominent Taiwanese stocks as global fund managers automatically reduced their holdings of such stocks in line with the benchmark MSCI index.