Taiwanese shares closed down 0.70 percent yesterday on continued weakness in the bellwether electronics sector amid weakening global consumption, dealers said.
The weighted index fell 29.89 points at 4,225.07, off a low of 4,190.02 and a high of 4,261.32, on turnover of NT$40.05 billion (US$1.2 billion).
Losers led gainers by 911 to 410 with 288 stocks unchanged.
The market opened lower as investors took cues from an overnight plunge on Wall Street after the latest disappointing US jobs data, dealers said.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average had closed down 2.51 percent overnight, the tech-heavy NASDAQ composite slid 3.14 percent and the broad-market Standard & Poor’s 500 sank 2.92 percent.
In Taipei trading, selling in electronics continued until the end of the trading session on fears that the deteriorating global economy would further undermine the sector’s profitability, dealers said.
Market sentiment toward high-tech stocks had turned more cautious after several electronic heavyweights lowered their earnings outlook for the fourth quarter, they added.
“The electronic sector has served as the backbone of Taiwan’s exports. Pessimism seems to have run deeper after the earnings downgrade,” President Securities (統一證券) analyst Steven Huang said.
Huang said he suspected the government stepped in to pick up large cap stocks like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) to support the broader market.
“The government’s support has prevented the market from heavy losses but is unlikely to reverse the current downturn,” Huang said, referring to the lingering impact from the global economic meltdown.
Elsewhere in Asia, stock markets closed the week mixed. Tokyo dipped 0.08 percent, Hong Kong jumped 2.5 percent, Shanghai rose 0.86 percent, Seoul advanced 2.1 percent, Sydney lost 1.2 percent and Mumbai shed 2.87 percent.
“Investors in Hong Kong are less panicky than they were months ago,” said Castor Pang (彭偉新), a strategist at Sun Hung Kai Financial Securities (新鴻基證券).
“They are focusing on the improving sentiment in the mainland’s stock markets, instead of the bearishness on Wall Street,” Pang told Dow Jones Newswires.
Ahead of yesterday’s US jobs report, London was down 1.34 percent, Frankfurt lost 2.57 percent and Paris dropped 2.86 percent in late morning trading in Europe.
Several European central banks slashed their interest rates on Thursday as authorities struggle to thwart the accelerating global downturn, but the cuts, which would normally support stock market sentiment, appear to have had little lasting effect.
The European Central Bank slashed rates to 2.5 percent while the Bank of England cut rates by 100 basis points to 2.0 percent — the lowest level since 1951.
A worse-than-expected reading for non-farm payrolls would increase the odds of the Federal Reserve slashing US interest rates by at least 50 basis points from the current level of 1.0 percent when it meets next week, dealers said.
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],”
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
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