Shares ended slightly higher yesterday led by financial firms, tracking overnight gains on Wall Street.
The TAIEX finished 42.39 points or 0.7 percent higher at 6,103, in trading valued at NT$94.14 billion (US$2.77 billion).
Advancers outnumbered decliners 377 to 262, while 177 issues ended the day unchanged.
"The local bourse is taking cues from the US market, which rose modestly overnight despite high oil prices," said Andrew Teng (鄧安瀾), a manager at Taiwan In-ternational Securities (金鼎證券).
In US trading on Wednesday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.6 percent, while the NASDAQ Composite Index rose 0.8 percent.
Taiwan Business Bank (台灣企銀), the most actively traded stock on the exchange, soared 4.8 percent to NT$12.05, while Taishin Financial Holding Co (台新金控) rose 2.1 percent to NT$29.
Shares of the nation's two largest airlines finished markedly higher on hopes President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) will call for direct transportation links with China during his National Day address on Sunday, analysts said.
EVA Airways (長榮航空) surged 6.8 percent to NT$14.95, while China Airlines (華航) jumped 4.4 percent to NT$19.2.
In the technology sector, chip packaging and testing firms rose after Siliconware Precision Industries Co (矽品) said on Wednesday that its revenue rose last month to a record NT$3.05 billion (US$89.9 million), up 24 percent from NT$2.47 billion (US$72.8 million) last year. Siliconware was up 1.2 percent at NT$25.1.
Teng said the bourse may be mired in a tight range in the next few sessions, as investors have been quick to take profits.
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained