Shares closed 5.4 percent higher yesterday in tandem with a strong global rebound boosted by international efforts to bail out troubled banks, dealers said.
The weighted index rose 271.12 points at 5,291.56 on turnover of NT$67.5 billion (US$2.08 billion).
Gainers outnumbered losers 1,511 to 198, while 251 stocks were unchanged.
Constructions surged 6.66 percent, financials rose 6.47 percent, textiles closed up 6.43 percent, and cements gained 6.31 percent.
“The market rebounded in line with international markets,” said Allen Lin of Concord Securities (康和證券).
“The governments’ efforts to come to the rescue of their banking sectors has boosted the confidence of local investors. although Taiwanese banks are relatively healthy by nature,” he said.
While saying the market was expected to test the 10-day moving average of 5,450 points today, Lin said he believes “the downside risks are low thanks to the government’s measures to prop up the market.”
Among the measures is the halving of the daily downward limit on the stock market from 7 percent to 3.5 percent while the daily upward 7.0 percent limit will stay unchanged.
A ban on the short-selling of stocks imposed earlier in the month by the Financial Supervisory Commission will be extended until Friday.
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],”
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
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