Oil and gold prices slid this week, in part due to worries that China could soon raise interest rates to tame its high inflation — fears that also weighed on copper after it struck a record high.
OIL: Crude oil prices sank this week after news of an unexpected rise in US crude reserves and on fears that China would take action to cool its robust economic growth, paring energy demand.
“The recent fundamentals, with large builds in oil inventories and ongoing concerns that China might raise interest rates, triggered long liquidation [selling],” Sucden Financial analyst Myrto Sokou said. “Investors might be cautious, as crude oil prices are likely to trade sideways, struggling for some clear direction in the short term.”
The oil market also fell after almost reaching US$100 a barrel last week, for the first time since October 2008, following news of a temporary shutdown of the Alaskan pipeline.
By Friday afternoon on London’s Intercontinental Exchange, Brent North Sea crude for delivery in March sank to US$96.86 a barrel compared with US$98.65 for the February contract a week earlier.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange, Texas light sweet crude for March delivery dropped to US$89.36 a barrel compared with US$91.23 for the February contract.
PRECIOUS METALS: Gold prices slipped, but palladium, which is used in the manufacture of catalytic converters, reached a decade-high at US$828 an ounce.
“China is again proving to be the driver of demand” for palladium, analysts at Commerzbank said.
Gold hit a record US$1,431.25 on Dec. 7, boosted by its safe--haven status as investors fretted over the eurozone debt crisis.
By late Friday on the London Bullion Market, gold fell to US$1,343.50 an ounce from US$1,367 a week earlier.
Silver dropped to US$27.14 an ounce from US$28.27.
On the London Platinum and Palladium Market, platinum edged up to US$1,817 an ounce from US$1,811.
Palladium jumped to US$814 an ounce from US$795.
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
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
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts