Stocks fell for the fourth day, led by Chinatrust Financial Holdings Co (
Taiwan Semiconductor Man-ufacturing Co (台積電) advanced after National Semiconductor Corp of the US said it will give it more business.
"TSMC is positioned to be the biggest beneficiary when major US chipmakers pare internal productions to cut costs," said Mike Shiao, who manages the NT$1.1 billion (US$32 million) Growth Fund at Invesco Taiwan Ltd.
The TAIEX shed 2.35, or 0.1 percent to close at 4,548.35. The benchmark climbed as much as 1 percent in intra-day trading. Four stocks fell for every three that gained. For the week, the index rose 1.2 percent.
Trading was worth NT$49.9 billion, about 40 percent below the daily average in the past three months.
Chinatrust Financial dropped NT$0.50, or 1.7 percent, to NT$28.70. Mega Financial lost NT$0.10, or 0.6 percent, to NT$17.20.
The nation's financial market, which has allowed the formation of 14 financial holding companies since 2001, can only support as many as 10 lenders, a local newspaper reported, citing a research report by the central bank.
TSMC rose NT$0.80, or 1.8 percent, to NT$44.90. United Microelectronics Corp (
California-based National Semiconductor expanded an agreement to order more products from TSMC, after saying it plans to fire 5 percent of its employees and sell some slower-growing businesses.
Separately, Merrill Lynch & Co raised its recommendation on the semiconductor industry to "slightly positive" from "negative," a day after Morgan Stanley raise ratings on Intel Corp.
Picvue Electronics Ltd (
Powerchip Semiconductor Corp (力晶半導體), the nation's third-largest maker of computer-memory chips, rose NT$0.30, or 3.2 percent, to NT$9.60. The company forecast demand will recover in the second half of this year, according to chairman Frank Huang (
Uni-President Enterprises Corp (
Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador. He credits Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life. “Before I was unemployed... And now I have my own business,” said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company. Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin
TECH RACE: The Chinese firm showed off its new Mate XT hours after the latest iPhone launch, but its price tag and limited supply could be drawbacks China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) yesterday unveiled the world’s first tri-foldable phone, as it seeks to expand its lead in the world’s biggest smartphone market and steal the spotlight from Apple Inc hours after it debuted a new iPhone. The Chinese tech giant showed off its new Mate XT, which users can fold three ways like an accordion screen door, during a launch ceremony in Shenzhen. The Mate XT comes in red and black and has a 10.2-inch display screen. At 3.6mm thick, it is the world’s slimmest foldable smartphone, Huawei said. The company’s Web site showed that it has garnered more than
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) and Episil Technologies Inc (漢磊) yesterday announced plans to jointly build an 8-inch fab to produce silicon carbide (SiC) chips through an equity acquisition deal. SiC chips offer higher efficiency and lower energy loss than pure silicon chips, and they are able to operate at higher temperatures. They have become crucial to the development of electric vehicles, artificial intelligence data centers, green energy storage and industrial devices. Vanguard, a contract chipmaker focused on making power management chips and driver ICs for displays, is to acquire a 13 percent stake in Episil for NT$2.48 billion (US$77.1 million).
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