TAIEX down ahead of Lunar New Year

Taiwan share prices closed 0.33 percent lower yesterday on profit-taking following strong gains led by technology bellwethers, particularly flat panel makers, dealers said.

They said the upcoming Lunar New Year holidays also kept investors cautious, with the market closed from Feb. 15 to Feb. 23.

The weighted index fell 25.69 points to the day's low of 7,850.06. The high was 7,894.77. Turnover came to NT$91.96 billion (US$2.79 billion).

"A moderate pull-back was hardly a big surprise after [Tuesday's gains]," Mega International Investment Services (兆豐國際投顧) assistant vice president Alex Huang (黃國偉) said.

"The simple fact is that the market is about to be closed for almost two weeks and too many things may or may not happen during that period," he said.

As such, investors have little incentive in pushing the benchmark index much closer to the psychological threshold of 8,000 points in coming sessions, he said.

Conversely, they also have little reason to aggressively sell down their holdings given the possibility that an upswing may set in after the holidays and once the uncertainties end, he added.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) closed down NT$0.10 yesterday at NT$68.80, finding no support in its dividend announcement.

Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp (奇美電子) was down NT$1.10 at NT$33.05 after reporting weaker-than-expected earnings for the fourth quarter of last year and giving a disappointing outlook for the current three months.

DRAM makers were mostly lower after a big drop in contract prices for the first half of this month, with Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) down NT$0.40 at NT$25.30 and Inotera Memories Inc (華亞半導體) down NT$0.70 at NT$36.45.