Shares ended slightly higher Tuesday as bargain hunting countered worries over climbing crude prices, dealers said.
The TAIEX finished up 8.36 points, or 0.1 percent, at 5,986.20. The value of trading dwindled to NT$66.21 billion (US$1.97 billion) from NT$74.65 billion on Monday. There were 566 decliners, 225 gainers and 179 unchanged issues.
In line with the falling stocks, the New Taiwan dollar moved down against its US counterpart, declining NT$0.056 to close at NT$33.445 on the Taipei foreign exchange market.
The weighted index also gained after Morgan Stanley told investors to buy the nation's equities and on news that the government promises of financial reform.
Morgan Stanley advised investors to raise their stakes in Taiwanese companies by 3.6 percentage points to 16 percent of funds invested in Asian equities outside of Japan. The brokerage recommended shares of MediaTek Inc (
MediaTek, the world's largest maker of chips for DVD players, added 1 percent to NT$313. TSMC, the world's largest supplier of made-to-order chips, rose 0.9 percent to NT$56.50. SinoPac, which is about one-third owned by overseas investors, gained 0.6 percent to NT$17.60.
Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp (
The Chi Mei Group runs a massive petrochemical plant in China and plans to open an electronics factory there.
AU Optronics Corp (
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
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts