The TAIEX yesterday rallied 1.65 percent to 8,857.02 points as investors responded positively to the meeting on Saturday between President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Singapore.
The meeting, the first between incumbent leaders on both sides of the Taiwan Strait since 1949, might not achieve substantial policy changes given its informal agenda, but might underscore a friendly cross-strait relationship, analysts said.
“Though it is not clear what the meeting would accomplish, the market greeted it with a positive attitude amid expectations that the cross-strait rapprochement might continue” after the presidential election, Marbo Securities Consultant Co (萬寶證券投顧) analyst Winson Wang (王榮旭) said by telephone.
Photo: CNA
All stock categories gained, led by semiconductors, which advanced 3.66 percent, and electronics, which picked up 2.06 percent, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed.
Turnover soared to NT$127.21 billion (US$32.89 billion), compared with NT$96.7 billion one day earlier, as foreign investors’ net position increased by NT$21.73 billion, while mutual funds and proprietary traders added NT$1.04 billion and NT$86.07 million respectively, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed.
The upcoming meeting deepened rumors of cooperation between technology firms on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, sending shares of Winstek Semiconductor Co (台星科) to close up by the daily limit at NT$29.50, Wang said.
China’s Jiangsu Changjiang Electronics Technology Co (江蘇長電) has voiced an interest in the Hsinchu-based Winstek, a chip tester.
MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s No. 2 handset chipmaker, gained 9.6 percent to close at NT$302.50, two days after China’s Tsinghua Unigroup Ltd (清華紫光) expressed its intention to buy a significant stake in the company in a bid to develop a comprehensive chip supply chain in China.
Masterlink Securities Investment Advisory Corp (元富投顧) president Liu Kun-hsi (劉坤錫) said investors welcomed alliances between technology firms from both sides of the Strait to help them gain competitiveness and market shares on the world stage.
“It is better to make partners than rivals when doing business,” Liu said by telephone.
Taiwanese firms have better chances of growing profit and scale by teaming up with their Chinese peers than fighting single-handedly in an ever-changing technology realm, Liu said.
Singapore-based Barclays PLC economist Leong Wai Ho (梁偉豪) said the Ma-Xi meeting is important, as some in the market are nervous about the future of Taiwan-China relations if the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) loses power.
“Some of the gains will be knee-jerk reactions, but there is a lot of Taiwanese businesses on the mainland. Travel and tourism, as well as airlines, hotels, retail and insurance can all benefit,” Leong told Bloomberg.
The local bourse is likely to consolidate with a positive bias depending on the Wall Street’s showing among other things, analysts said.
The TAIEX might benefit from plans to scrap a capital gains tax and hit the 9,000-mark later this week in the absence of bad news from the US and China, Wang said.
Liu expects technical resistance at 8,940 level, as fund managers move with caution.
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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