After more than a decade at a machinery manufacturer, Mister Chiang recently handed in his resignation and became a full-time investor. The reason was simple: his combined annual salary and bonus as a supervisor was nearly the same as the profits he had made investing in the Taiwan Stock Exchange over the previous eight months.

Chiang only opened a brokerage account at the end of last year, using NT$2 million (US$62,800) in initial capital from a home equity loan. Within eight months he had generated an unrealized gain of NT$800,000 (US$25,000). Candidly, he describes how the prolonged doldrums of the machinery industry in recent years, the reduced schedules and unpaid leave at his company, and frequent layoffs across the industry prompted him to start teaching himself how to invest.

"We don't earn the high salaries people in the tech industry do. In conventional industries money is made by working overtime, but there are no shifts to add," he says with an awkward chuckle. "So rather than checking the market in secret during work hours, I figured I might as well focus on stock trading."

People like Chiang, who quit their jobs to become full-time traders, are still a minority. But treating stock trading as a side hustle, or as a means for financial security, has become increasingly common among Taiwan's workforce.

Joe, a high school teacher, admits that when he first entered the profession he had his heart set on becoming a bona fide teacher. Now, however, his attitude has become "if that's the level of salary then there is no point in putting too much stock in my day job." He spends a few minutes each day engaged in day trading, and sometimes the price spreads he makes in a single day exceed his entire monthly salary.

"I won't be quitting my job, but I also won't devote all my energies to teaching. For ordinary salaried workers, the stock market is the only real chance to get ahead," he asserted.

Joe is not alone, as this attitude is increasingly prevalent. According to a survey by a job search platform, over 60 percent of office workers have considered quitting their jobs to become day traders, and one out of 10 people checks the market ticker while they are at work.

Maggie Wang (王安倫) has noticed the same trend from her professional position as director of human resources at ATEN International. Since last year, many managers have reported that employees spend meetings looking down at their phones - not sending messages, but placing stock trades. She says this issue has become a challenge for HR professionals.

During the first five months of this year, 565,000 new brokerage accounts joined the Taiwan Stock Exchange. Research also shows that after 2020, stock ownership among younger investors began rising again.

The nationwide enthusiasm for stock investing reflects more than a speculative mindset; it also underscores growing anxiety over stagnant wages and soaring housing prices. Although Taiwan's economy has expanded rapidly in recent years, 70 percent of workers still earned below the average monthly wage in the first quarter of 2026. At the same time, Taipei's house price-to-income ratio has climbed to 33.6.

"People need to stop whining about young people speculating in stocks," says Maggie Wang. "It is simply too difficult to start a family or establish a career on a regular income. So investing in stocks has become an almost automatic response." Lin Chi-chao (林啟超), chief economist at Cathay United Bank, likewise argues that wages have failed to keep pace with the rapid growth of AI-related industries and rising asset prices, intensifying people's sense of relative deprivation.

An even larger issue is that Taiwan's taxation system only encourages this behavior.

Nearly 70 percent of Taiwan's individual income tax is levied on wages. However, profits from stock trading are exempt from taxes, and only a securities transaction tax is required. Dachrahn Wu (吳大任), professor of economics at National Central University, observes that workers must pay income tax on their wages, while investors who earn millions of Taiwan dollars from the stock market pay no capital gains tax. This stands in sharp contrast to countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, and Japan, where capital gains are subject to income tax.

Many finance and tax policy experts believe that, given daily turnover that routinely exceeds NT$1 trillion on the Taiwan Stock Exchange, the government should revisit the taxation of capital gains rather than continuing to encourage speculative short-term trading.

Economist Huang Shih-Chang (黃勢璋), director of the Third Research Division at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER), argues that when governments fail to tax capital adequately, they are left with little choice but to raise contributions for labor insurance, health insurance, and other social entitlement programs. The result, he says, is a "hidden tax on labor" that raises business costs while suppressing wage growth. Increasing capital gains taxes, he argues, would reduce the burden on workers and help break Taiwan's low-wage cycle.

When "a day of stock trading is worth more than a month of hard work" becomes a common sentiment throughout society, the consequences extend well beyond just the individual. Dachrahn Wu worries that as more and more young people see monthly salaried jobs as beneath them, the talent pool sustaining the real economy will dry up. Even more worrisome is the rising number of people borrowing against their home equity, taking out personal loans, or investing the funds they had set aside for a down payment on a home in the stock market instead.

"Under normal circumstances, people should invest only surplus funds," said Wu. "Instead, many are mortgaging their homes to borrow money for stock trading." The greatest danger, he warns, lies with individual investors who lack an understanding of risk and gamble their life savings, and even their homes, on the market. If sentiment turns and the market reverses, those who view the stock market as their best chance to improve their lives will be the ones who suffer the most.

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Translated by David Toman
Uploaded by Ian Huang