The New Taiwan dollar yesterday closed below the NT$30 mark against the US greenback for the first time in more than 38 months amid hot money inflows, traders said.
The NT dollar picked up NT$0.011 from Tuesday to close at NT$29.99 versus the US currency in Taipei on a combined turnover of US$1.123 billion on the Taipei Foreign Exchange and Cosmos Foreign Exchange markets.
It was the first time the NT dollar ended below the NT$30 mark since September 2014, dashing a popular belief that the central bank would intervene at the bell to support exporters.
Exporters should sell US dollars to strengthen their books and finance year-end bonus payouts, one currency trader said.
The appreciation came even as institutional investors trimmed their positions in local shares.
Foreign institutional investors yesterday slashed holdings by a net NT$6.74 billion (US$224.7 million), while mutual funds cut NT$170.55 million and proprietary traders increased stakes by a net NT$54.93 million, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed.
Hot money appears to be staying in Taiwan, despite the portfolio adjustments, the trader said.
The central bank has refrained from interventions after the US Department of the Treasury in October last year placed Taiwan on its currency monitoring list.
It said the central bank was intervening to stem the NT dollar’s rise to help Taiwanese exporters.
Traders expect the NT dollar to fluctuate at about NT$30 in the short run as the central bank has shown intolerance for excessive volatility.
The US currency would be buttressed by importers, who tend to buy the greenback when it nears the threshold, another trader said.
As of yesterday, the NT dollar has gained 7.09 percent this year, the central bank’s Web site said.
It has challenged the NT$30 level several times this year.
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