The New Taiwan dollar yesterday gained against the greenback, building on six weekly advances, after larger-than-expected job cuts in the US spurred speculation the Federal Reserve would expand the supply of its currency.
The NT dollar reached a two-year high as foreigners bought US$193 million more local shares than they sold yesterday, boosting net purchases for this year to US$3.8 billion, exchange data showed.
US data on Friday showed 95,000 jobs were lost in September, more than the drop of 5,000 forecast by economists in a Bloomberg survey.
“The US may print more money to save its economy and that’s weighing on the greenback and supporting Asian currencies,” said Eric Hsing, a debt trader at First Securities Inc (第一金證券) in Taipei. “Strong economic growth in Taiwan and Asia are also attracting funds.”
The NT dollar rose 0.3 percent to close at NT$30.998 against its US counterpart, Taipei Forex Inc data showed. The currency reached NT$30.645 on Thursday, the strongest level since August 2008.
The currency trimmed gains during the final minutes of trading on suspected intervention by the central bank, said two traders familiar with the matter, who declined to be identified.
It was trading 1 percent stronger at NT$30.791 five minutes before the market’s close.
Taiwan’s monetary authority started auditing local banks’ currency-forwards operations to prevent the use of such contracts in foreign--exchange speculation, the Chinese-language Commercial Times reported on Saturday, citing Department of Financial Inspection Deputy Director-General Chiu Ming-chuan (邱明全).
Minister of Finance Lee Sush-der (李述德) said the government has no plans to impose a new tax on short-term capital flows, the Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported the same day.
Asia’s developing economies will expand 9.4 percent this year, outpacing growth of 2.7 percent in advanced countries, the IMF forecast on Wednesday last week. The Washington-based lender forecast growth of 9.3 percent for Taiwan.
The nation’s benchmark five-year bonds were little changed yesterday, with the yield on the 2 percent note due in July 2015 at 0.83 percent, GRETAI Securities Market data showed.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to