Shares prices trended lower on the local bourse yesterday as investors were affected by a plunge on Wall Street overnight amid concerns over Argentina’s latest debt default and the financial problems of a leading Portuguese bank, dealers said.
While the bellwether electronics sector’s weakness continued yesterday, chemical stocks were hit hard by a series of gas explosions that rocked Greater Kaohsiung late on Thursday night, killing at least 26 people and injuring 269, as uncertainty remains over what caused the blasts, dealers said.
The TAIEX closed down 49.34 points, or 0.53 percent, at 9,266.51 on turnover of NT$98.73 billion (US$3.29 billion).
“While the impact of the financial woes in Argentina and Portugal are expected to be limited on global financial markets, many investors at home and abroad tended to seize on the lead to cut their holdings and protect whatever gains they had built recently,” Concord Securities (康和證券) analyst Kerry Huang said.
Bucking the downturn in the electronics sector, integrated circuit designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科) rose 5.86 percent to close at NT$496.5 after the company on Thursday raised its forecast for smartphone chip shipments to 350 million this year, up from 300 million.
The company said it is also likely to ship 30 million 4G smartphone chips this year, higher than its previous forecast of 15 million.
Over the last two sessions, the local bourse has retreated by 1.92 percent as large-cap semiconductor stocks came under heavy downward pressure.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), the most heavily weighted stock, fell 0.83 percent to close at NT$120 yesterday, while Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), which assembles iPads and iPhones for Apple Inc, lost 1.45 percent to NT$102.
“After the losses [on] Thursday and Friday, the local bourse is expected to consolidate for some time over the next few sessions, but judging by today’s movement, I think the local bourse could find short-term technical support [at] around 9,200 points,” Huang said.
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