Taiwanese shares yesterday tumbled following overnight losses on Wall Street and European markets as investors turned cautious amid mounting uncertainty about next week’s US presidential election, dealers said.
The cautious sentiment dominated the global stock markets following some poll numbers tightening over the past week, they said.
While some of the latest presidential polls showed Democratic US presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton maintaining a big lead over Republican rival Donald Trump, a poll by ABC News showed Trump leading by 1 point, while the Los Angeles Times put the Republican candidate more than 2 points ahead.
Yesterday, the TAIEX closed down 133.66 points, or 1.44 percent, at 9,139.04 after moving between 9,230.23 and 9,139.04, on turnover of NT$63.64 billion (US$2.02 billion).
Almost all major stock categories lost ground, with companies in the Apple Inc supply chain and other large-cap stocks suffering the biggest losses and dragging down the broader market.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), the most heavily weighted stock in the market, fell 1.85 percent to close at NT$186, while Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), an assembler of iPhones and iPads, declined 2.36 percent to end at NT$82.60.
Metal casing producer Catcher Technology Co (可成) ended 5.95 percent lower at NT$229, while Largan Precision Co (大立光), a smartphone camera lens supplier to Apple, fell 2.19 percent to close at NT$3,570.
Electroacoustics maker Merry Electronics Co (美律) dropped 4 percent to end at NT$119.
Bucking the downward trend, smartphone maker HTC Corp (宏達電) gained 0.65 percent to finish at NT$92.40.
Turnover remained low amid lingering cautious sentiment, as many investors remained wary of the effects of a possible Trump presidency, Mega Securities Co Ltd (兆豐證券) analyst Huang Kuo-wei (黃國偉) said.
Other factors contributing to market uncertainty include an upcoming referendum in Italy on constitutional reform, a looming interest rate hike in the US and the approaching third-quarter earnings report season, he 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
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts