The Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) faces challenges amidst rapid changes in technology and competition in the global capital market, making it crucial for the bourse's management to adjust supervision appropriately to balance fundraising among investor groups and stay competitive, the outgoing chief said on Monday.
Pakorn Peetathawatchai, the SET president whose term will end on Sept 19, said the bourse has three important foundations, led by upgrading and increasing work efficiency to be on a par with global competition as a fundraising venue for investors.
Secondly, the SET should reduce redundant investment processes, help all parties expand their businesses at low cost, and increase the number of new products. Finally, it should promote sustainable finance, and provide investment knowledge to help companies conduct business sustainably.
"The world is changing rapidly, especially in terms of technology while investors' behaviour has also changed with a greater role for social media. That has changed the way the capital market works as well as the way supervision is carried out," he said.
In Mr Pakorn's view, an increase in governance would help the SET keep up with rapid changes in technology and competition in the global capital market.
Currently, both external and domestic factors are supporting a recovery of the SET index with the Federal Reserve signalling rate cuts. That would drive economic recovery in many countries, improve liquidity, and attract more capital to flow into emerging stock markets.
Domestic factors are improving economic conditions on the back of a tourism and export recovery, and higher profitability of listed companies in the second quarter than in the first three months. In addition, the launch of the Vayuphak Fund and Thai ESG Fund have boosted the SET index by almost 10% during this month to date.
Analysts from Globlex Securities said the SET index continued to move upwards on Monday as the first day of the Vayupak Fund's offering to the public boosted speculation on stocks that are the targets of the state investment fund.
The public can subscribe to the fund until Friday, then the fund would be offered to institutional investors on Sept 23.
Investors were also speculatively buying large-cap stocks in line with expectations that the Fed would cut interest rates by 25 or 50 basis points at its meeting on Wednesday, which was an additional factor supporting the index.
MFC Asset Management, the Vayupak Fund's asset management company and fund unit distributors, said purchases of the fund were lively on the first day as investors showed a high level of interest and were confident the fund would generate 100-150 billion baht as expected.