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原文標題：Taiwan Stock Crash Shows World Dangers of Too Much Leverage
原文連結：https://reurl.cc/YW2RE0
發布時間：Wed, May 12, 2021, 4:57 PM
原文內容：
(Bloomberg) -- Few things evoke fear in equity markets like a margin call. On
Wednesday that fear turned into panic in Taiwan, offering another warning for
the world on what can happen when leverage unwinds.

The trading day started out quiet in Taipei’s $2 trillion stock bourse. But
before the morning was over, the local benchmark index had plummeted almost
9% in the worst one-day performance in its 54-year history.

There were reasons to sell. New data showed a worsening Covid-19 outbreak in
an island where almost no one is vaccinated. A deepening slump in global tech
shares also undermined the appeal of a market dominated by the industry. But
the swiftness of the plunge that followed suggests bigger forces were at play.

For months, bull market skeptics around the world have warned that surging
leverage is making equity markets riskier -- and the blowup of Archegos
Capital Management in March served as a reminder of that. Yet stocks have
continued to rise, with the MSCI All-Country World Index closing at a record
as recently as Friday. In the U.S., margin debt topped $822 billion by the
end of March -- the latest available data. That’s up 72% year on year.

On a smaller scale, the same happened in Taiwan. Armed with conviction, and
with history on their side, investors took on increasing amounts of leverage.
The result was a 46% expansion in margin debt this year to about NT$274
billion ($9.8 billion) two weeks ago, the highest since 2011. By comparison,
the Taiwan benchmark was up just 19% in that period, an indication that
people were taking out loans faster than stocks were appreciating.

Local investors had little reason to fear losses. Taiwan’s economy became
one of the biggest winners from U.S.-China rivalry. Its chipmakers flourished
as Washington sought to hobble Beijing’s efforts to build a domestic chip
industry. During President Donald Trump’s four-year term, the Taiex
benchmark became the world’s best performing stock gauge, gaining more than
90% in U.S. dollar terms.

Gains extended this year as the pandemic created a shortage of chips, with
the index rising for seven straight months through April.

The euphoria began to unravel this week as the threat of inflation sank the
Nasdaq, with tech stocks around the world following suit. As the Taiex slid
3.8% on Tuesday in Taiwan, the level of margin debt fell by NT$12.6 billion,
the most since October 2018. That suggests traders faced margin calls by
brokers to cover losses in their stock accounts.

Wednesday’s record rout is likely to have spurred a bigger unwinding of
leverage. (Comparatives are skewed by the widening of daily price limits for
individual stocks in 2015.)

“Margin trading boosted the Taiex over the past few months, which may add to
declines if they face margin calls,” said MasterLink Securities Investment
Advisory President Paul Cheng.

The fear of further losses was evident in a stock market where individual
investors account for about 60% of transactions. The derivatives market burst
with activity: more than 1.75 million options tracking the Taiex changed
hands on Wednesday, the third-busiest day since 2016. Traders snapped up
bearish contracts even as dozens of short-term options expired, with the
price of one put surging as much as 7,757%.

KGI Securities’ trader Kevin Lee, who has been a local stocks trader for a
decade, said clients started to panic as the morning wore on.

“There were non-stop orders coming in,” Lee said. “Investors were crazy as
there were lots of news during trading hours and we didn’t know if they were
true or not.”

By the end of the day, the index had pared its losses to 4.1%. But the damage
to investor confidence was already done.

心得/評論：

我是在看美股新聞，突然看到標題出現台股才點進去看的
簡單的說就是
"台股崩盤讓各國看到過度槓桿的危險"
台灣又讓世界看見了
阿門

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