Local shares on Friday closed higher at 10,965.39, setting them up to tackle the 11,000-point threshold next week, analysts said.
The TAIEX on Friday closed up 10.1 points, or 0.09 percent, on turnover of NT$121.99 billion (US$4.16 billion). That was an increase of 1.3 percent from a close of 10,821.53 on April 3, the last day of trading before the Tomb Sweeping Day holiday.
The index immediately traded higher after the bourse opened, and fluctuated between a high of 10,988.23 and a low of 10,938.37 throughout the day.
The main force behind the uptick came from stocks in the optoelectronics sector, which rose by 2.37 percent, the electrical and cable sector, which rose 0.71 percent, and the semiconductor sector’s 0.29 percent increase.
Shares of Largan Precision Co (大立光), a smartphone camera lenses supplier to Apple Inc, breached the NT$3,500 mark, prompting the steady increase of stock prices among other companies in the sector.
Meanwhile, gains by producers of printed circuit boards were responsible for an increase in the electrical and cable sector.
Elsewhere in Asia on Friday, markets mostly rose as US President Donald Trump soothed concerns about military action in Syria while also sparking hopes the US could rejoin a massive Pacific-wide free-trade pact.
Trump on Wednesday sent shudders across trading floors when he warned “missiles will be coming” to Syria in response to an alleged chemical attack by the Russia-backed regime, fueling fears of a standoff between the major powers.
However, he tempered the rhetoric a day later, suggesting that he might hold off on an imminent strike while he holds talks with France and Britain on how to deal with the crisis.
As investors digested the remarks, it emerged that Trump had directed senior aides to explore rejoining the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which he left on taking office and called a US jobs killer.
The U-turn came as he suggested that the US and China might not eventually impose tariffs on each other’s goods, despite recent tit-for-tat warnings over hundreds of billions of dollars of trade.
That followed Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) conciliatory speech this week promising to open up China’s economy.
The developments have provided a huge lift to markets, which were sent into turmoil when Trump on Friday last week threatened fresh tariffs on a vast array of Chinese imports, fanning fears of a trade war between the world’s top two economic powers.
Trump on Thursday also said the review of a trade pact with Canada and Mexico was “coming along great.”
“Remarkable. That’s the only thing I can really say in the past 36 hours or so about the change in tone that seems to be emanating from the president and the White House,” AxiTrader chief market strategist Greg McKenna said. “President Trump is walking back from the brink on so many fronts it’s making my head spin.”
“It’s becoming clear his tweets are part of an anchoring approach he uses in negotiations and then eases away from to achieve what he wants. It’s working on many fronts, and he’s eased back on China and Russia/Syria this week, and there was news last night he’s even reconsidering the TPP,” he added.
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 on Friday rose 118.46 points, or 0.6 percent, to 21,778.74, an increase of 1 percent from 21,567.52 on April 6.
Seoul’s KOSPI on Friday ended up 12.36 points, or 0.5 percent, at 2,455.07, rising 1 percent from a close of 2,429.58 a week earlier.
However, the Shanghai Composite on Friday fell 21.11 points, or 0.7 percent, to 3,159.05, but still rose 0.9 percent from 3,131.11 on April 4.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng on Friday slid 22.90 points, or 0.1 percent, to 30,808.38, an increase of 3.2 percent from a close of 29,844.94 a week earlier.
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],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained