The TAIEX ended the week up 2.7 percent at 8,843.84, buoyed by Thursday’s report that fourth-quarter economic growth expanded at a faster-than-expected rate of 6.92 percent, dealers said yesterday.
The benchmark index recovered from last week’s 8,609.86, led by financials, which rose 4.27 percent, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed.
Domestic demand plays such as textiles and construction rose 3.5 percent, while export-oriented electronics climbed 1.17 percent, the data showed.
Foreign institutional investors bought a net NT$12.71 billion (US$432.2 million) in stocks, ending seven consecutive trading days of net selling, the exchange said.
“The termination of net selling by foreign investors led to the stock market’s uptrend,” Chang Shu-hui (張淑蕙), a fund manager at Prudential Financial Securities Investment Trust Enterprise Co (保德信投信), said in a research report.
Although net selling by foreign investors reached NT$78.2 billion in the seven trading days after the Lunar New Year break, they still have more than NT$370 billion in speculative capital parked in Taiwan, which could be spent on increasing their holdings of domestic shares in the future, Chang said.
The robust economic growth last year could also encourage investors to buy more shares, said Sunny Chung (鍾兆陽), a fund manager at Allianz Global Investors Taiwan Ltd (德盛安聯證券投信).
The economy expanded at a faster-than-expected pace in the second half of last year amid robust exports, bringing GDP growth last year to a 24-year high of 10.82 percent, the Directorate-General of Accounting, Budget and Statistics said on Thursday.
A continuing global economic recovery has kept the US stock market rising this year, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average hitting a two-and-a-half-year high of 12,318, which could also benefit the Taiwanese stock market, Chung said.
BNP Paribas Securities upgraded the Taiwanese stock market to “overweight” in its latest Asian equity research report, with an index target of 11,200 points.
Henry Chen (陳志恆), an investment research director at KBC Concord Asset Management Co (康和比聯投信), maintained his conservative view of the domestic stock market in the short term, saying electronics companies could continue to suffer from a stronger New Taiwan dollar this year, which would keep their share prices under pressure.
However, domestic demand stocks, such as travel, retail and department stores, could benefit from government policy adjustments, including proposals to raise salaries, as the administration gears up for the presidential election next year, Chen 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