This is good news for continued fund flow into the local equity market here. LTF’s essentially were created as a methodology for individuals to 1.) minimise their tax bill, 2.) improve domestic long term shareholding in the SET.

Whats startling is still the simple fact that despite retail investors accounting for 60% of daily trading in the SET, the number of mutual fund accounts are still only at 2 million. Perhaps that helps to explain why Thailand has a horrible Gini coefficient…but that’s a rant for another time.

“The incentive for LTF investment will be revised to sustain the demand. Assets under management of LTFs are around 150 billion baht now,” said Mr Sathapana.

According to AIMC, total assets under management of AIMC’s members as of last Friday totalled 2.36 trillion baht.

Of the total, 61.7% or 1.46 trillion baht was fixed-income funds, 478 billion baht was equity funds (20.2%), 70.4 billion baht was mixed funds (2.98%) and 129 billion baht was property funds (5.45%).

Source: Bangkok Post