Not sure. As an employee we had to open a Yuanta account but that’s par for the course here.
How did the whole story play out in the end? Did you manage to find a securities company willing to open an account under your company’s name? Asking because I have some spare cash in a business account that I would like to put to work.
I was able to open an account with Sinopac Securities and the bank as well in the process. I can trade stocks with their app (in Chinese only tho). He said I cannot trade ETFs if not a local but I think he may be wrong on that since I have an Investment Visa and am supposed to be able to invest in anything Taiwan related.
I just walked into the Xinyi Rd branch in DaAn and asked to open an account in English and showed them my business information. Only one banker spoke some English, Brian, and he helped us do all the paperwork, there was a lot. My wife had to fill out a lot in Chinese. Took a few hours but finally got it set up. They had never set up a foreigner business account before! But they figured it out with some phone calls to HQ.
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Great to hear that it worked out in the end!
He’s almost certainly wrong. I have a personal account already and can trade ETFs without any issues.
Anything banking/investment related in Taiwan takes ages, especially if foreigners are involved.
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I just met with him and I can trade stocks and stock ETFs, but not bonds. Also he says foreigners cannot buy funds that pay monthly income (for local retirees). It’s annoying that stocks only pay yearly dividends, so can’t be used for living income.
I’m sure he’s also wrong on the bonds, but he said gov’t bonds pay very low rates and not worth trading anyway. He is making a list of some top stocks (conservative) and ETF’s that he recomends I research into.
ask him to give you a full list of firms that will pay out (have announced already) cash dividends, listed from top to bottom by payout ratio.
for example, if a stock will pay out NT$4 in cash (usually summer is dividend season) and currently is trading at NT$100, then its cash dividend payout will be 4%, or much higher than bonds.
Obviously, not all firms will pay out the same cash dividend each year, but you can see which ones are healthy growth firms.
There are some firms that based on current stock price will pay out 8% or even 10% in cash dividend.
Note that expense ratios on ETFs domiciled in Taiwan tend to be fairly high, especially for those investing abroad. Even among local stock ETFs, there are big differences. For instance, for an ETF of the top 50 Taiwanese stocks, Yuanta charges 32bp a year, while Fubon charges only 18.5bp.
Some ETFs seriously lack liquidity, like Fubon’s MSCI Taiwan ETF. Not necessarily an issue if you buy and hold, but still something to be aware of.
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What’s a good website to track stock info in Taiwan? This kind of info should be easy to pull out without having to ask a broker.
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https://www.twse.com.tw/en/page/trading/exchange/BWIBBU_d.html
this only a quick find
dividend yields from 2018
can pull down to change to 100 entries at a time
but should still make the broker work for his company comms by asking for those that already announced and will pay out in next few months
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Thanks for the tips, all. I found you can find TW listed stock info like ex-div dates and PE etc on Bloomberg.com and Yahoo Finance, but searching for the ticker numbers doesn’t always work. Each has its own way of listing, like 0054:TT or 0054.tw. But better than nothing, and its free info.
via Google search https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/0056.TW/
Oh and also Morningstar.com has good info but their search doesn’t work for TW. I have to search Google with the ticker+morningstar to find them.
example: https://www.morningstar.com/stocks/XTAI/1326/quote.html