The current THB 18 trillion of Thai capital markets have a lot of stocks to choose from. There’s a total of 828 public companies trading on both exchanges. The main bourse, SET Index has 620 companies, while the smaller market, mai has 208 companies. This caused an on-going debate in Thai capital markets on whether “the 4 and half hours are enough?”.
Most of the world exchanges are having a longer trading hour than Thais. For example, European countries have a daily session length of 8 and a half hours, the commonwealth countries such as Canada and Australia, also the ex-colony of Britain like USA, India and Malaysia, have 6 to 6 and a half trading hours. Only the Chinese exchanges like Shanghai and Shenzhen are having less than Thais, at 4 trading hours.
After system failures in Oct 2019, the world’s third largest exchange, Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) had been considering extending its original 5 trading hours, from 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM with 1 hour noon break. The exchange finally came with a resolution this month to extend the closing time of the afternoon session for arrowhead trading by 30 minutes to 12:30 – 15:30.
Meanwhile, Thailand Stock Exchange (SET) has been planning to consider an extension due to an increase in the variety of trading assets. As many stocks could be link to Thai Futures products that are the derivatives of foreign indices and commodities which adjust around the clock, it’ll put Thai market players into disadvantage if the trading hours aren’t covered.
SET’s 2023-to-2025 plan, is aiming to simplify the capital market, attracting SME and start-up through its LiVE Academy and Platform along with the development of Thai Digital Token Exchange (TDX) for both utility and investment tokens. The Thai exchange also planning to upgrade its exchange infrastructure, develop the SMART Marketplace data analytic platform and pushing the Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) agenda as well.
