Fluctuations in Taiwan-based smartphone camera lens supplier Largan Precision Co’s (大立光) share price triggered a price stabilizing mechanism on the local main board yesterday, leading to 22 brief trading suspensions of the shares in the morning session, the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) said.
The TWSE said that trading of Largan shares was suspended for two to three minutes 22 times before 10am, after the exchange’s price stabilizing mechanism found some irregularities in trading orders.
Under the price stabilizing mechanism, as long as a price-matching simulation system finds that a share could rise or fall more than 3.5 percent after matching potential buyers and sellers on a trial basis, trading of those shares will be suspended for two to three minutes during the TWSE’s call auction, where buy and sell orders are collected over a fixed period and are matched at the end of the period.
The TWSE said that it has launched an investigation into trading irregularities and that such brief trading suspensions are designed to avoid market speculation by certain traders, which could hurt other investors and even affect the broader market.
Market analysts said it is likely that some institutional investors wanted to push up Largan shares in a bid to lure other institutional investors to follow suit to chase prices, but those who boosted Largan shares would take advantage of the soaring share price to cut their holdings and lock in profits.
Before triggering the price stabilizing mechanism, the shares continued momentum from previous trading sessions amid optimism about the smartphone camera lens marker’s bottom line.
However, after the suspension, Largan shares fell into negative territory and the weakness continued into the end of the day’s session, which dragged down the broader market, as Largan stock is the most expensive on the Taiwanese market.
Largan shares closed down 3.26 percent at NT$4,010 yesterday on the main board, off an early high of NT$4,245, with 784,000 shares changing hands.
Led by Largan’s downturn, the bellwether electronics sector ended down 0.35 percent and the weighted index on the main board closed down 0.32 percent.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the