A total of 33 single-stock futures (SSF) on financial firms, electronics companies and traditional industries were listed for the first time on the Taiwan Futures Exchange (TAIFEX) yesterday.
TAIFEX is the world’s 23rd futures exchange to trade SSFs, which is also the 21st financial product offered by the exchange since it began trading futures on Taiwanese stock indices in 1998.
“The listing of SSFs marks a significant step in the domestic futures market,” Taiwan Futures Exchange Corp chairman Joseph Tsai (蔡慶年) told a launch ceremony.
HEDGING
“SSFs will serve as a more precise hedge instrument for individual stocks,” Tsai said.
Single-stock futures are futures contracts for an underlying stock, which can be traded on margin instead of the underlying stock, thereby offering higher leverage.
Also speaking at yesterday’s ceremony, Taiwan Securities Association (券商公會) chairman Hwang Min-juh (黃敏助) said that the global transaction volume of SSFs grew 59.9 percent year-on-year in 2008 to more than 1.15 billion contracts, outstripping a 13.2 percent growth in the world’s futures market.
“SSFs are based on individual stocks rather than the entire stock index, so they can reduce tracking errors caused by using stock index futures as well as enhance the effects of a hedge,” Hwang said.
The number of underlying stocks will be adjusted on a quarterly basis based on market demand and the principle of fairness, TAIFEX president Steve Wang (王中愷) 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