TFEX Weekly Summary

Anxiety over the economic recession has intensified, while rescue packages for financial institutions seem to be useless. AIG announced a loss in the fourth quarter of last year of US$61.7 billion, (Bt2.2 trillion), the highest in US business history. This made the Dow Jones Industrial Average early last week fall to a 12year low. Despite the rally on Thursday from China's announcement on GDP growth expectations, the DJIA dropped to a new low after GM announced that it might file for bankruptcy.

The SET announced total net profit of listed firms in 2008 at Bt313 billion, a fall of 25 per cent from last year.

Trading volume on the Thailand Futures Exchange (TFEX) last week declined from the previous week while trading volume of gold futures increased significantly with more than 1,000 contracts for the first time as of March 3.

Weekly trading volume on the TFEX totalled 36,072 contracts worth Bt11,674.26 billion, with 30,260 contracts for SET50 Index futures, 692 for singlestock futures, 3,967 for gold futures and 1,153 for SET50 Index options. Openinterest contracts were 43,065 as of Thursday.