Foreign investors were net buyers of shares this year on the Stock Exchange of Thailand for the first time since 2016, market statistics show.
Foreign net buying for the year totalled 202.7 billion baht, compared with net sales of 48.6 billion in 2021 and 264.4 billion baht the year before that.
A weak baht that made Thai shares relatively inexpensive for holders of dollars was one factor attracting foreigners to the Thai bourse. As well, energy companies, which have a disproportionately high weighting in the overall SET Index, performed well as oil prices were pushed up by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Large-cap energy stocks are typically sought after by foreign funds.
All other investor groups were net sellers on the year: local institutional investors at 153.9 billion baht, brokerages 3.4 billion and retail investors 45.4 billion baht.
The SET rose 7.46 points on Friday to close at 1,668.66 points, for a gain of 3.1% from the week before, in surprisingly heavy trade worth 77.6 billion baht. For the year, the index was up 0.7% from 1,657.62 a year earlier, which was a 14.3% gain from the year before.
The index reached its high for the year of 1,713.20 on Feb 18, while the low of 1,533.27 occurred on July 15.
In a year in which 12-month declines outnumbered advances on stock exchanges worldwide, the SET did slightly better than regional peers Kuala Lumpur (down 3.5%), Ho Chi Minh City (down 32.1%), and the Philippines (down 10.5%), while Jakarta gained 4.1% and the Straits Times Index in Singapore was up 3.5% on the year.