If you’re an ARC/APRC holder and interested in investing in the Taiwanese stock market, first set up a bank account if you don’t already have one. If you do, take your passport and ARC/APRC to the securities company associated with your bank. This will generally be in a different location/building from your bank branch.

Just Google your bank’s name with 「證券」 behind it. Here are some of the most popular ones:

• 富邦證券
• 永豐金證券
• 元大證券
• 兆豐證券
• 國泰綜合證券

When you arrive, you’ll be asked if you were referred there, but if not, they will assign someone to come and ask you some questions regarding your income and how much you’re interested in investing, as well as whether you only want to invest in Taiwanese stocks (委託) or if you want to invest in overseas stocks as well (複委託), although you’re not allowed to invest in your home country’s stocks.

You’ll be asked if you have a bank account with the associated bank, and then you’ll have to sign a bunch of forms (bring your chop if you started your bank account with a chop). They will then teach you how to use the bank’s associated app, and will ask you if you want a paper or electronic booklet to record your trades (the Taiwan Depository & Clearing Corp. app for Android or Apple).

You’ll be given login information for both your trading app and the TDCC app once your account has been registered.

A few things to note:
– If you’re buying individual stocks, remember to use 「零股下單」 as opposed to 「證券下單」, as the latter works in units of 10,000.
– You will only receive roughly 71% of any dividends issued, due to a flat tax rate for “non-residents” (this will be refunded as part of your tax bill the following year if you’re retroactively considered resident for tax purposes), and an NHI deduction of 8%.
– Stocks listed alongside the letters TPE are on the Taiwan Stock Exchange Corporation (TWSE), and are integrated into Google Finance should you wish to collate information on individual stocks (price/high52/low52/change/closeyest), so if you wanted a Google Sheet cell to display the price of the Yuanta Top 50 ETF (0050), you would write the following: ==GOOGLEFINANCE(“TPE:0050”, “price”)
– Stocks listed with the letters TWO are listed on the TPEx or the Taipei Exchange, for SMEs and smaller companies, and over-the-counter trades. These are not integrated into Google Finance, so you’ll have to either find the information yourself, or integrate it with the following: =IMPORTXML(“https://tw.stock.yahoo.com/quote/3491.TWO”, “//*[@id=’main-0-QuoteHeader-Proxy’]/div/div[2]/div[1]/div/span[1]”) where the former part is the stock’s Yahoo page, and the latter is the X Path.

For more information and interesting tidbits about the investment landscape in Taiwan, there’s a great Mandarin-language podcast called Gooaye.

This should not be considered financial advice and is just for information purposes.