Despite a regional market slump triggered by Thailand's capital controls and a technical correction at home, Taiwan's stock market recorded only a slight drop yesterday, with a foreign equity research house predicting that the index could rally to 10,000 points next year.
Macquarie Securities, which upgraded its rating on the local bourse to "overweight" earlier this month, said in a report released yesterday that it expected the benchmark index to reach 10,000 points by the end of next year, making it one of the most bullish among recent forecasts made for the market.
The TAIEX yesterday stopped a three-day rally and slid by 25.74 points, or 0.34 percent, to 7,598.88 on turnover of NT$114.86 billion (US$3.5 billion).
Technology shares led the decline, with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world's largest made-to-order chipmaker, dropping 2.3 percent to NT$65.20. TSMC's Fab 12 in the Hsinchu Science Park (新竹科學園區) experienced a temporary power outage on Monday afternoon, but the company yesterday said that operations were back to normal.
Foreign investors sold a net of NT$323.27 million of domestic stocks yesterday. Year to date, foreign investors have bought a net of NT$534.43 billion, according to Taiwan Stock Exchange's data.
Macquarie's forecast is the most upbeat among the projections made by local and foreign securities houses in recent weeks. These include Goldman Sachs' index target of 9,400 points, Citigroup Global Markets' 8,450 and Mega Securities Co's (
In the report, Chris Hunt, head of equity research at Macquarie's Taiwan branch, cited 10 factors as the basis of his optimistic view of the local stock market.
Topping the list is regional liquidity, which is expected to flow back to Taiwan as portfolio investors change their position from being underweight on Taiwan during the last two years to overweight, Hunt said.
The effect might be enhanced if the local currency appreciated significantly along with the Chinese yuan and the Japanese yen as the greenback weakens in line with an expected US economic slowdown next year, Hunt wrote.
Taiwanese high-tech companies' earnings had bottomed out in the third quarter of this year and began to move up in current quarter, Hunt wrote, adding that strong growth in the semiconductor subsector would likely kick in after the second quarter of next year.
Other factors such as capital inflow from private equity fund players on the lookout for "big" deals, a forecast rebound in domestic consumption confidence and retail investor sentiment, and attractive stock valuations could all drive up the market next year, Hunt said.
In May, Jesse Wang (
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
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
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],”
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