Public confidence staged a V-shaped rebound this month after major global economic bellwethers stopped declining and the local bourse resumed active trading, a survey by Cathay Financial Holdings Co (國泰金控) showed yesterday.
The pickup in sentiment is especially evident in terms of investment outlook as a sizable number of respondents, 26.8 percent, expect the TAIEX to rise in the coming six months, while 35.8 percent hold the opposite view, the survey said.
The discrepancy narrowed to 9 percent this month, from 36.5 percent last month, after the main index rallied 7.7 percent in the past three weeks, outperforming the global stock index’s 1.9 percent rise, Cathay Financial said.
The sentiment sub-index climbed to its highest level since April, when talks of a capital gains tax on stock investments started to sap the local bourse, the survey said.
Meanwhile, 27 percent of the respondents were upbeat about the nation’s economic outlook, compared with 40 percent with pessimistic, the survey found.
The finding was a marked improvement from last month when respondents who were bearish outnumbered their optimistic peers by more than 40 percent, Cathay Financial said.
“A stabilizing eurozone accounted for the shift in sentiment,” the nation’s largest financial services provider said.
Consequently, about 13.6 percent and 16.4 percent of the respondents voiced willingness to increase spending for big-ticket purchases in the next six months, the survey indicated.
Still, a large number of respondents, 70.2 percent, expect consumer prices to rise over the next six months, with the size of increase ranging from 3 to 6 percent, the survey 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],”
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
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