Asian stocks fell for a fifth day on Friday as Greece asked for a deferral on its debt payments. Chinese shares rallied, with the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index closing above 5,000 for the first time since 2008.
The MSCI Asia Pacific Index slid 0.9 percent to 147.95 on Friday, dropping a fifth day and closing 2.2 percent lower from May 29.
The measure fell for a second week amid a selloff in bonds and commodities. Greece became the first country since the 1980s to defer a payment to the IMF. While international officials have reported some progress in the talks in recent days, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said they were far from reaching a conclusion.
“The market selloff isn’t over given the huge moves we’ve seen this week in the bond markets,” Michael McCarthy, chief market strategist at CMC Markets in Sydney, said by phone. “Greece delaying debt payments is definitely not positive. There’s a lot of pressure on asset prices that’s really related to the bond market moves.”
In Taipei, shares remained in the doldrums on Friday following a 2.2 percent plunge in the index on Thursday. Large-cap stocks, especially in the electronics sector, failed to generate any positive momentum, dealers said.
Select stocks in the financial sector attracted bargain hunting, outperforming the broader market and lending some support to the index, they said.
The TAIEX edged down 0.1 percent on Friday and fell 3.7 percent from the previous week to close at 9,340.13.
“The local equity market has become technically fragile and it was no surprise that the weakness continued today after foreign institutional investors built up a large number of short position contracts in the futures market,” MasterLink Securities (元富證券) analyst Tom Tang (湯忠謙) said.
“Despite bargain hunting seen late in the session, the market could continue falling in the near future to the next technical support level at around 9,200 points,” Tang said.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) fell 0.71 percent to close at NT$140, while flat-panel maker AU Optronics Corp (友達光電) lost 1.27 percent to end at NT$15.60.
In the financial sector, which closed up 0.38 percent, Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控) rose 1.95 percent to NT$62.70 and CTBC Financial Holding Co (中信金控) added 1.3 percent to NT$23.45.
“The financial sector’s rebound showed optimism that major financial holding companies, like Fubon Financial, will report better earnings this year” at a time when interest rates are set to move higher, Tang said.
Japan’s TOPIX slipped 0.4 percent. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 Index lost 0.1 percent. New Zealand’s NZX 50 Index closed little changed. South Korea’s KOSPI dropped 0.2 percent. Singapore’s Straits Times Index declined 0.3 percent, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index slumped 1.1 percent.
The Shanghai Composite Index climbed 1.5 percent, capping a 8.9 percent advance this week, the most since December. Price swings are widening, with the Shanghai index’s 100-day volatility measure at the highest level in more than five years.
“Volatility will probably increase,” said Wang Zheng (王徵), Shanghai-based chief investment officer at Jingxi Investment Management Co (精熙投資管理). “The higher the index moves, we’ll see more investors take short-term profits.”
Record growth in margin debt helped add more than US$4 trillion to the value of mainland Chinese shares this year as the Shanghai Composite surged 55 percent. While bulls say gains are fueled by confidence Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) will succeed in turning the nation from an export-led manufacturer into a consumer-spending powerhouse, bears point to valuations as evidence of a bubble. Shares on the gauge traded at 20.1 times estimated earnings at the close on Friday, compared with 17.7 times for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index on Thursday.
Elsewhere in Asia, Bangkok rose 1.1 percent, Jakarta ended up 0.1 percent and Kuala Lumpur climbed 0.22 percent, while Manila fell 0.4 percent and Mumbai slid 0.2 percent.
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
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