Share prices closed 1.28 percent lower yesterday on concerns about the impact of domestic fuel price hikes, dealers said.
They said transport and industrial firms fell sharply on worries that they would face higher operating or production costs.
The weighted index closed down 112.66 points at the day’s low of 8,665.73 on turnover of NT$111.66 billion (US$3.66 billion).
Decliners outnumbered advancers 1,916 to 498, while 270 stocks were unchanged. Five stocks closed limit-up, while 40 were limit-down.
Alex Huang (黃國偉), an assistant vice president at Mega International Investment Services (兆豐國際投顧), said that the fuel price increases that took effect yesterday could lead to further hikes down the road.
“The latest price adjustments do not fully reflect crude oil price surges,” he said. “There are worries about further [hikes] going forward.”
Higher fuel prices raised inflation worries and stoked concerns about the impact on the economy, Huang said, adding inflation and relations with China will continue to dominate the local bourse in the near term.
Meanwhile, ING Securities Investment & Trust Co (安泰證券投信) — which manages the equivalent of about US$13 billion — thinks the TAIEX will gain to 12,000 in a year on improving relations with China and the new government’s economic policies.
“The previous political tension was an obstacle in joining the China growth story,” Steve Chu (鄒鴻圖), Taipei-based head of equities at the company said yesterday in Seoul.
“Tax reform and other economic policies will help boost domestic demand and attract money to Taiwan,” he said.
The TAIEX has added 1.88 percent this year, one of two Asian benchmarks to post a gain.
Chu is increasing his holdings of financials and other stocks related to the domestic economy.
Lower taxes will encourage Taiwan’s investors to invest in Taiwan’s assets rather than overseas, helping boost the economy, he said.
Foreign investors are also buying Taiwanese stocks this year after being net sellers in the previous two years, Chu said.
“The reversal of fund flows has just begun,” he said.
Earlier this month, the government raised its target for this year’s economic growth from 4.8 percent to 5 percent.
Chu said he also expects growth of “around 5 percent” on improving relations with China, and as investment in infrastructure projects help offset the negative impact of inflation.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) last week recorded an increase in the number of shareholders to the highest in almost eight months, despite its share price falling 3.38 percent from the previous week, Taiwan Stock Exchange data released on Saturday showed. As of Friday, TSMC had 1.88 million shareholders, the most since the week of April 25 and an increase of 31,870 from the previous week, the data showed. The number of shareholders jumped despite a drop of NT$50 (US$1.59), or 3.38 percent, in TSMC’s share price from a week earlier to NT$1,430, as investors took profits from their earlier gains
In a high-security Shenzhen laboratory, Chinese scientists have built what Washington has spent years trying to prevent: a prototype of a machine capable of producing the cutting-edge semiconductor chips that power artificial intelligence (AI), smartphones and weapons central to Western military dominance, Reuters has learned. Completed early this year and undergoing testing, the prototype fills nearly an entire factory floor. It was built by a team of former engineers from Dutch semiconductor giant ASML who reverse-engineered the company’s extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) machines, according to two people with knowledge of the project. EUV machines sit at the heart of a technological Cold
CHINA RIVAL: The chips are positioned to compete with Nvidia’s Hopper and Blackwell products and would enable clusters connecting more than 100,000 chips Moore Threads Technology Co (摩爾線程) introduced a new generation of chips aimed at reducing artificial intelligence (AI) developers’ dependence on Nvidia Corp’s hardware, just weeks after pulling off one of the most successful Chinese initial public offerings (IPOs) in years. “These products will significantly enhance world-class computing speed and capabilities that all developers aspire to,” Moore Threads CEO Zhang Jianzhong (張建中), a former Nvidia executive, said on Saturday at a company event in Beijing. “We hope they can meet the needs of more developers in China so that you no longer need to wait for advanced foreign products.” Chinese chipmakers are in
AI TALENT: No financial details were released about the deal, in which top Groq executives, including its CEO, would join Nvidia to help advance the technology Nvidia Corp has agreed to a licensing deal with artificial intelligence (AI) start-up Groq, furthering its investments in companies connected to the AI boom and gaining the right to add a new type of technology to its products. The world’s largest publicly traded company has paid for the right to use Groq’s technology and is to integrate its chip design into future products. Some of the start-up’s executives are leaving to join Nvidia to help with that effort, the companies said. Groq would continue as an independent company with a new chief executive, it said on Wednesday in a post on its Web
RSS