On ex-dividend day, Taiwan exchanges cut a stock’s reference price by the full cash payout; 填息 (tianxi, ‘filling the gap’) means climbing back to the pre-ex price. How the July–September season works, why a smaller gap needs a smaller move to fill, and how the 21% withholding tax changes the math for foreign holders.
Taiwan’s headline policy rate — the rediscount rate — is a signaling device almost no bank actually borrows at. The real monetary work happens through daily certificate-of-deposit issuance, reserve requirements, mortgage credit controls, and the managed New Taiwan dollar. Here is how to read all five levers.
TWSE and TPEx publish every margin-eligible stock’s outstanding margin loans each evening for free, and once an account’s maintenance ratio falls below roughly 130% the broker issues a margin call — with forced selling following only if collateral is not restored by the deadline. Here is how to read Taiwan’s retail leverage data step by step — and why sharp margin contractions, not rising balances, tend to mark market bottoms.
Foreign investors cannot simply open a Taiwan brokerage account the way locals do: you must first register with the TWSE as a FINI or FIDI — a filing handled through a locally appointed agent, which under current TWSE account-opening rules can be a securities broker or a custodian bank — and only then open a local broker account. Custody arrangements depend on your circumstances. Here is each step, what differs for individuals versus institutions, and the ADR/ETF alternatives if you skip it.
TAIFEX Taiwan index futures stop trading on the third Wednesday of each month, and the final settlement price is an arithmetic average of TAIEX values over the last 30 minutes of the spot session (13:00-13:30 Taipei) — not the closing print. Here is how the calendar, the averaging window, and expiry-week rollover actually work, with a worked example reading foreign net open interest.
TAIFEX publishes foreign investors’ net open interest in TAIEX futures and the options put/call OI ratio every trading day — but a large negative net OI is usually a hedge, not a bearish bet. Here is how to read both gauges, with a worked example from real August 2026 data, the practitioner heuristics and their limits, and the divergences that matter.
Every Taiwan-listed company must publish unaudited monthly revenue by the 10th of the following month — a disclosure cadence almost no other market mandates. Here is where to find the filings (MOPS, TWSE OpenAPI), how analysts nowcast TSMC’s quarter from two monthly prints, and the calendar and FX traps to avoid.
TSMC carries roughly 35% or more of the TAIEX’s capitalization weight, so a 1% move in the stock mechanically shifts Taiwan’s benchmark by about 0.35 percentage points before any other share trades. Here is how to decompose any TAIEX session into its TSMC and non-TSMC components — with worked examples from real July 2026 data.
Every Taipei trading day ends with one release that sets the next morning’s narrative: the three institutional investors report. Here is what foreign investors, investment trusts, and dealers each represent, how to read net buy/sell streaks and per-stock T86 data, and how to cross-check cash flows against TAIFEX futures positioning before drawing conclusions.
Taiwan’s equity market runs 09:00-13:30 Taipei time, settles T+2, and shifts every obligation forward one business day when an unscheduled closure hits. A field guide to the trading calendar, call auctions, the after-hours session, and the time-zone gap for overseas investors.