The stock market will open for trading as normal on Monday, the Cabinet announced yesterday, after President Chen Shui-bian (
No matter which camp wins the election today, the shooting is expected to cast a pall on the nation's financial markets next week, analysts said yesterday.
"This horrendous incident will definitely hurt the financial market next week, as well causing uncertainty in the market in the short term," said Peter Hsieh (謝杰良), manager of Polaris-Protime Securities Consultant (寶來普泰投顧).
Many analysts were expecting to see a bull market led by pan-blue related stocks next week underpinned by general anticipation that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-People First Party (PFP) alliance would win the election, Hsieh said.
Transportation stocks, for example, surged 3.77 percent yesterday, more than any other sector, reflecting that investors expected the China-friendly pan-blue camp to open direct links, Hsieh said.
But Chen's shooting yesterday may bring in some sympathy votes, which has had market watchers hesitant to make predictions about the stock market's performance next week.
"The assassination attempt brings more variables to the result of the presidential election," Hsieh said. "If the incident and the result trigger riots tomorrow [Saturday], the TAIEX will go down next week for sure."
The shooting occurred after the stock market closed. The TAIEX rose 28.06 points, or 0.4 percent, to 6,815.09 points on turnover of NT$174.79 billion after fluctuating between 6,833.49 and 6,751.54 during the session.
Besides transportation stocks, companies that have heavy investments in China also made considerable gains.
China Airlines (
Financial shares that once led the market this year, however, tumbled by 0.91 percent. First Financial Holding Corp (
Jones Wang (
"I think the result and how society reacts to the result is the point ... we hope the voting process goes smoothly," Wang said.
Stanley Yeh (
Both local and foreign investors were looking forward to a surge after the election, with investment trust and proprietary traders buying a net NT$3.86 billion yesterday, while overseas investors pumped in NT$4.27 billion.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day