Are the shareholding and trading behaviors of diverse investors affected by the relaxation of day trading?

Abstract

The day trading in Taiwanese stock market expands considerably at the beginning of 2016, which increases the transactions of stocks consequently and sparks our interest in exploring the issue of day trading. In this study, we use the data of Taiwan Stock Exchange listed firms to investigate whether the day trading volume over total trading volume (hereinafter referred to as the day trading ratio) and the turnover ratio enhanced by the increase of day trading volume would affect the shareholding and trading behaviors of diverse institutional and individual investors. Unquestionably, we bring out several impressive findings. First, foreign institutional investors would not prefer holding or trading the stocks with high day trading ratios, whereas individual investors would prefer holding these kinds of stocks. We infer that this finding might result from the fundamental and the speculative concerns of these various investors. Second, domestic institutional investors and security dealers would prefer trading the stocks with high turnover ratios, but foreign institutional investors still lack of interest in trading these stocks, implying that the investment strategies would be dissimilar among various institutional investors. Since foreign institutional investors are regarded as the successful institutional investors in Taiwan, we argue that our revealed results may help market participants trace the behaviors of diverse investors, especially the foreign institutional investors, after day trading relaxation in Taiwan.