TL;DR: "Fund flow" aggregates the daily net buy/sell of Taiwan's three institutional groups — foreign investors, investment trusts, and dealers — by industry, and plots it as a rotation chart. Reading it tells you which industries market money is concentrating into, and which it is leaving.
What it shows
After each trading day, the Taiwan exchange publishes what the three institutional groups (foreign investors, investment trusts, dealers) bought and sold. Summing the stocks within one industry gives that industry's net buy or net sell for the day.
- Net buy (inflow): institutions bought more than they sold — money is flowing into the industry.
- Net sell (outflow): they sold more than they bought — money is leaving.
- Accumulating each day's net figure produces the multi-line fund-flow chart: one line per industry, rising for sustained inflow, falling for sustained outflow.
Money shifting from one industry to another is what professionals call sector rotation.
How to read it
- Direction first: a line above the zero axis and climbing means money kept concentrating into that industry; below zero and falling means it kept being pulled out.
- Who is most concentrated: the industries labelled on the right are the biggest inflows or outflows — the "main battlefield" for money.
- Single-day intensity: the ★ marks the day an industry had its largest single-day net buy/sell, usually tied to some news or event.
- Filter by group: you can view the flow for a single role — foreign investors (large positions, often lead the market), investment trusts (window-dressing seasonality near quarter-end), or dealers (short-term). Knowing each group's character makes the same chart read differently.
Common misconceptions
- Inflow ≠ guaranteed rise: fund flow reflects where money is moving; it is a clue about the money side, not a promise of price direction and not investment advice.
- One day is not a trend: single-day figures are easily swayed by events — the meaningful signal is the accumulated direction over several days.
- Institutions buying ≠ you should follow: institutions have different costs, horizons, and goals; fund flow is a tool for understanding the market, not a signal to copy.
Related topics
- Who the three institutional groups are and how they move prices
- Margin financing and short selling (retail sentiment)
- Net buy/sell rankings and relative strength
To see a real fund-flow chart, open "Market › Fund Flow" and move the cursor across dates — the side list re-ranks the top inflow/outflow industries for that day in real time.