Kasikorn Securities shifts weight to banking, energy sectors

By The Nation

Kasikorn Securities aims to boost the weight on bank and energy shares seeing as the Thai stock market is expected to rise to 1,400 points at the end of this year thanks to the expected development of a Covid-19 vaccine.

Vasin Vanichvoranun, the securities company's CEO, said he does not expect the second wave of Covid-19 infections to be very severe.

“Also, commercial banks still have a lot of capital, and since they are under the central bank’s supervision, they will not fail that easily,” he said. “Meanwhile, listed companies’ profits have improved, though investors should keep an eye out or the US-China conflict which may affect investment in the short term.”

Hence, he said, Kasikorn Securities will put more weight on investment in bank and energy stocks, instead of weighting e-commerce, food and electronics stocks as it had done previously.

“Since interest returns will remain low for a while, we expect investors to gradually invest in equities and short-term debt instruments instead of holding on to cash,” he said.

“We also believe that foreign investments is another way of diversifying risks and generating good returns, such as stocks in Europe, China, South Korea and Taiwan.”

In addition, he said, Kasikorn Securities will launch three funds, namely foreign fund, fixed income fund and retirement mutual fund, this year which should attract investors. He added that he expects Kasikorn Securities’ assets under management this year to be as good as or even better than that of last year’s Bt1 trillion.

“The securities company currently holds assets worth Bt1.3 trillion, Bt1 trillion of which is mutual funds, Bt188 billion retirement mutual funds and Bt168 billion private funds. The market share of these funds is 21.4 per cent, 15.5 per cent and 15.3 per cent, respectively," he said.

“According to the Association of Investment Management Companies’ data on July 31 this year, our securities company was given the top ranking among securities companies that have the most market share in the mutual fund industry,” he added.

Source: https://www.nationthailand.com/business/30393684