After staging a robust rebound a day earlier, the stock market shed 45.3 points, or 0.85 percent, to 5,246.26 at the end of trading yesterday on the back of Wall Street’s fall, analysts said.
Turnover remained light at NT$53.35 billion (US$1.65 billion), with foreign investors buying a net NT$1.18 billion in local shares, compared with a net sale of NT$1.52 billion by domestic investment trust companies, stock exchange data showed.
The local bourse opened at 5,225.05 and fluctuated between 5,246.26 and 5,178.68 during the trading day. Government intervention in the last minutes of trading was believed to have narrowed the fall.
Eric Lai (賴建承), an analyst at Marbo Securities Consultant Co (萬寶證券投顧), said the TAIEX’s performance was closely tied to US equities. The Dow Jones Industrial Average had dipped 76 points, or 0.8 percent, on Tuesday on poor showings by major US high tech companies, Lai said.
Over 200 listed companies, including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), closed limit down 3.5 percent, stock exchange data showed.
Two of the eight main stock categories gained ground, with the construction sector the best performer, up 3.3 percent, and Lai attributed the rise to a successful auction on Tuesday of the leasing rights to state-owned land in the upscale Xinyi District (信義) of Taipei.
“The transaction helped boost investors’ confidence in the real estate market,” Lai said by telephone. “The planned cut in inheritance and gift taxes was also positive news.”
Looking ahead, Lai said that as long as the US stock market regained stability, the local bourse would witness more rallies, such as on Monday when the TAIEX rallied 271.12 points, or 5.4 percent.
The analyst said he was not worried that the index would suffer a sharp slump after the 3.5 percent daily limit expires at the end of the week.
“The measure is to blame for the thin trading,” Lai said. “While helpful in curbing the size of falls, it also serves to dampen investors’ willingness to enter the equity market.”
Also See: Crisis: Avoiding the Western trap、 Markets slump as recession fears grow、 US financial crisis hits third-quarter shipments of PCs
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],”
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
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