The stock market yesterday withstood the potential impact of the government's plan to levy capital-gains tax on institutional investors' stocks, and continued rising for a second day, backed by a constant inflow of overseas capital.
Overseas investors kept up purchases, acquiring a net NT$9.37 billion (US$302 million) worth of Taiwanese shares yesterday ahead of Morgan Stanley Capital International's (MSCI) re-weighting of its Taiwan Index at the end of this month.
Foreign investors have bought a net NT$31.06 billion worth of Taiwanese stocks this week.
The TAIEX nudged up by 40.46 points, or 0.68 percent, to close at 5,967.96 on a turnover of NT$80.27 billion. Nevertheless, decliners outnumbered gainers 438 to 409, with 167 stocks remaining unchanged, according to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
"MSCI's re-weighting has started bringing the bullish effect into full play by attracting increasing capital inflow [into the local bourse]," said Wu Pei-wei (
Wu said that the Ministry of Finance's plan to include institutional investors' capital-gains tax from their stock investments in the government's minimum-tax proposal did not seem to bother foreign investors much.
"We tend not to be pessimistic about the plan," the fund manager said.
Wu said the chance that the tax proposal will be implemented is slim, as President Chen Shui-bian's (
Investors should set their sights on electronics stocks, especially key component makers in the integrated-circuit design industry and the thin-film-transistor-panel sector, Wu said.
MSCI's removal of the Limited Investability Factor that had been applied to Taiwan's bourse was to be undertaken in two stages.
The first revision occurred on Nov. 30 last year, when MSCI changed the weighting of its Taiwan Index from 55 percent to 75 percent.
The final revision will be made on May 31, when the weighting of the Taiwan Index will be removed so that the benchmark will fully reflect the listed prices of Taiwan's securities.
Another analyst said that the MSCI factor is expected to bolster the performance of the local bourse this month.
"We expect as much as US$5 billion in capital to be injected into [Taiwan's] stock market this month," said Joseph Yeh (葉震宙), managing director and general manager of BNP Paribas Securities Taiwan Co.
Nonetheless, JP Morgan Chase Bank yesterday reduced its index target for the TAIEX to 7,500 points, from the target of 10,000 points it set last year.
The US investment bank cited dramatically slowing earnings growth in the year to date, an underperforming equity market since 2002 and continuing low exposure of domestic investors to equities.
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