TAIFEX Institutional Traders — Taiwan Futures & Options Positions

Get structured JSON access to what Taiwan's three institutional trader groups do in the derivatives market every day — across all 23 TAIFEX futures contracts and all 5 options contracts, with both daily flow and end-of-day open interest.

The Taiwan Futures Exchange publishes 三大法人 (three major institutional investors) positioning after every session:

• 外資及陸資 (foreign & mainland investors) — the dominant force in TAIEX futures; their net open interest is the single most-watched positioning number in Taiwan markets
• 投信 (investment trusts) — domestic funds, mostly hedging equity books
• 自營商 (dealers) — proprietary desks and market makers, typically the fastest-turning of the three

Spot institutional flow tells you what they bought today. Futures open interest tells you how they are positioned for tomorrow — and unlike the cash market, it shows direction and leverage.

Why this data matters

• Foreign net OI in TAIEX futures (TXF) is the standard proxy for offshore positioning on Taiwan; large swings routinely precede index moves
• Open interest, not just flow — a desk can be a net seller today while still holding a large net long; only the OI columns show the standing bet
• Put/call ratio on TAIEX options (optional output) is the classic contrarian sentiment gauge; the OI-based ratio is the version Taiwan desks actually quote
• Calls and puts split separately for options, so you can see whether a group is buying upside or paying for protection
• Micro and mini contracts (TMF, MXF) reveal retail-adjacent flow that the large contract hides
• 22 non-index futures — semiconductors, shipping, biotech, plus overseas indices (S&P 500, Nasdaq-100, TOPIX, FTSE 100) — are covered by the same schema

Output

One record per contract, per institution, per trading day. Futures produce 69 rows/day (23 contracts × 3 institutions); options produce 30 rows/day (5 contracts × call/put × 3 institutions).

{
  "record_type": "INSTITUTIONAL_POSITION",
  "date": "2026-07-30",
  "contract_code": "TXF",
  "contract_name": "臺股期貨",
  "contract_name_en": "TAIEX Futures",
  "contract_type": "FUTURES",
  "call_put": null,
  "institution": "DEALER",
  "institution_zh": "自營商",
  "is_overseas_index": false,
  "buy_volume": 8948,
  "buy_value_thousands": 72462872,
  "sell_volume": 9565,
  "sell_value_thousands": 77393618,
  "net_volume": -617,
  "net_value_thousands": -4930746,
  "buy_open_interest": 6991,
  "buy_open_interest_value_thousands": 56441635,
  "sell_open_interest": 4995,
  "sell_open_interest_value_thousands": 40306880,
  "net_open_interest": 1996,
  "net_open_interest_value_thousands": 16134755,
  "market_direction_net_volume": -617,
  "market_direction_net_open_interest": 1996
}

Field	Meaning
contract_code	Official TAIFEX product code (TXF, MXF, TXO, …)
contract_type / call_put	FUTURES or OPTIONS; CALL/PUT on options rows, null on futures
institution	DEALER (自營商), INVESTMENT_TRUST (投信), FOREIGN (外資及陸資)
is_overseas_index	true for the six foreign-index futures — see the note below
buy_volume / sell_volume	Contracts bought / sold during the session (futures 多方/空方交易口數, options 買方/賣方交易口數)
net_volume	Daily flow: contracts bought minus sold
buy_open_interest / sell_open_interest	Contracts held at the close on each side
net_open_interest	Net standing position — the headline positioning number
market_direction_net_volume / market_direction_net_open_interest	Bullish-positive versions of the two net fields — see the note below
*_value_thousands	Matching notional values in NT$ thousands

With includePutCallRatio enabled, one extra row per trading day carries record_type: "PUT_CALL_RATIO" with put_volume, call_volume, put_call_volume_ratio_pct, put_open_interest, call_open_interest and put_call_oi_ratio_pct for TAIEX options.

Reading options rows correctly

The exchange labels the futures columns 多方/空方 (long/short) but the options columns 買方/賣方 (buy-side/sell-side). Both literally mean bought and sold — which is why this Actor names them buy_* and sell_* — but on a put, the buyer is short the market. Treating buy_open_interest on a put row as a long position silently inverts the signal.

Use market_direction_net_volume and market_direction_net_open_interest when you want a directional read: they equal the plain net fields for futures and calls, and flip sign for puts. Summed across contracts, they reproduce TAIFEX's own aggregate long/short totals exactly.

Two things to know if you want to reproduce the exchange's published headline numbers:

• TAIFEX excludes the six overseas-index futures (TJF, SPF, UNF, UDF, SXF, F1F) from its aggregate table — filter on is_overseas_index: false
• Options totals are stated in market direction, so use the market_direction_* fields

Both rules were derived by reconciling this Actor's output against the official aggregate feed, not assumed.

Contracts covered

Futures (23): TXF TAIEX · MXF Mini-TAIEX · TMF Micro-TAIEX · EXF Electronics · FXF Finance · ZEF Mini Electronics · ZFF Mini Finance · STF Single Stock · ETF ETF · GTF TPEx Index · XIF Non-Finance Non-Electronics · G2F TPEx 200 · M1F Taiwan Mid-Cap 100 · E4F Taiwan Sustainability · BTF Taiwan Biotech · SOF Semiconductor 30 · SHF Shipping · TJF TOPIX · SPF S&P 500 · UNF Nasdaq-100 · UDF Dow Jones · SXF PHLX Semiconductor · F1F FTSE 100

Options (5): TXO TAIEX · TEO Electronics · TFO Finance · STO Single Stock · ETC ETF

Input

Field	Type	Description
startDate	string (required)	YYYY-MM-DD
endDate	string	YYYY-MM-DD inclusive; empty = single day
dataType	string	both (default), futures, or options
contracts	array	Optional filter, e.g. ["TXF", "MXF", "TXO"]. Chinese names also accepted. Empty = all
institutions	array	Optional filter: DEALER, INVESTMENT_TRUST, FOREIGN. Empty = all three
includePutCallRatio	boolean	Add one TAIEX options put/call ratio row per trading day

Example — a month of foreign positioning in TAIEX futures, with sentiment:

{
  "startDate": "2026-07-01",
  "endDate": "2026-07-30",
  "dataType": "futures",
  "contracts": ["TXF", "MXF", "TMF"],
  "institutions": ["FOREIGN"],
  "includePutCallRatio": true
}

Example — full daily snapshot, futures and options:

{
  "startDate": "2026-07-30",
  "dataType": "both"
}

Pricing & cost control

Pay per result: $0.50 / 1,000 records.

• Full snapshot (futures + options), one day: 99 records ≈ $0.05
• One month of everything (~22 sessions): ~2,180 records ≈ $1.09
• One contract, one institution, one month: ~22 records ≈ $0.01

Filtering by contracts and institutions happens before results are stored, so a narrow watchlist stays cheap even over long date ranges.

Data source & reliability

• Direct from the official Taiwan Futures Exchange 三大法人 CSV exports (futContractsDateDown, callsAndPutsDateDown, pcRatioDown) — no third-party intermediaries
• Reconciled against a second official feed: every per-contract figure is summed and matched against the independent TAIFEX OpenAPI aggregate table — all three institutions, all six volume and open-interest columns, exact to the contract
• Contract codes come from the exchange's own product dropdown, not hand-mapped — the report itself prints only Chinese names
• Identity checks built into the parser: the exchange prints its own net columns, and the Actor verifies net = buy − sell on every volume and open-interest field, logging any violation loudly. Notional value columns are checked within the exchange's ±NT$2k rounding on those columns
• Column-layout guard: if TAIFEX changes the report schema, the run fails loudly instead of returning silently mis-mapped numbers
• History reaches back about 3 years (a rolling window on the exchange's side); older dates return no rows, and the Actor says so explicitly rather than returning an unexplained empty dataset
• Weekends skipped automatically; exchange holidays return no rows and are handled cleanly
• TAIFEX publishes this report around 15:00 Taipei time; run after that for the current session

Use cases

• Tracking foreign institutional net open interest as a directional signal on the TAIEX
• Positioning dashboards combining futures OI with cash-market institutional flows
• Put/call ratio sentiment models on TAIEX options
• Backtesting institutional-positioning factors in Taiwan derivatives
• Monitoring dealer vs investment-trust divergence around expiry weeks
• Research on overseas index futures listed in Taipei (S&P 500, Nasdaq-100, TOPIX, FTSE 100)

Related Actors

• TWSE Institutional Trades — the cash-market side of the same three institutions, main board
• TPEx Institutional Trades — same for the OTC market
• Taiwan Short Sale & Securities Lending Balance — bear positioning in the cash market
• Taiwan Margin Trading — retail leverage on the long side
• Taiwan Shareholding Dispersion (TDCC) — weekly retail vs whale ownership
• Taiwan Monthly Revenue — monthly revenue of all listed companies