Taiwanese shares are likely to keep falling next week after plummeting 9.34 percent last week on worries that China and the US will hike their interest rates, dealers said Friday.
Old-economy shares, which suffered the heaviest losses in the past week, would continue to be pressured on concerns China's moves would hurt Taiwanese exports, particularly raw materials such as steel and cement.
Investors were concerned after Beijing said it would take "forceful measures" to cool its economy. More than a quarter of Taiwan's exports now go to China.
China's top executive body has ordered that no approvals for new steel, aluminum and cement projects be made this year in a bid to halt "haphazard" and "redundant" investments, state media said Friday.
There were also fears about the latest SARS outbreak in China.
Taiwan's weighted index plunged 630.29 points in the past week to close at 6,117.81, following a 1.03-percent decline the previous week.
Niven Wang, broker at President Capital Management Corp (
"China's efforts to cool its economy have clouded the prospect of Taiwan's economy and what the market fears the most is uncertainty," he said, adding the impact could last for two months.
Sentiment might also be dampened by anticipation that the US Federal Reserves might raise interest rates in the week ahead, Wang said.
But Mao Jen-chieh (
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
Taiwan has enough crude oil reserves for more than 100 days and sufficient natural gas reserves for more than 11 days, both above the regulatory safety requirement, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday, adding that the government would prioritize domestic price stability as conflicts in the Middle East continue. Overall, energy supply for this month is secure, and the government is continuing efforts to ensure sufficient supply for next month, Kung told reporters after meeting with representatives from business groups at the ministry in Taipei. The ministry has been holding daily cross-ministry meetings at the Executive Yuan to ensure
RATIONING: The proposal would give the Trump administration ample leverage to negotiate investments in the US as it decides how many chips to give each country US officials are debating a new regulatory framework for exporting artificial intelligence (AI) chips and are considering requiring foreign nations to invest in US AI data centers or security guarantees as a condition for granting exports of 200,000 chips or more, according to a document seen by Reuters. The rules are not yet final and could change. They would be the first attempt to regulate the flow of AI chips to US allies and partners since US President Donald Trump’s administration said it rescinded its predecessor’s so-called AI diffusion rules. Those rules sought to keep a significant amount of AI
A new worry has been rippling across the stock market lately: Entire businesses, not just their employees, might be thrown out of work. While most economists say fears of an artificial intelligence (AI) job apocalypse are overblown, seismic shifts have happened in the past after big tech breakthroughs. The IT revolution of the 1990s led to a surge in productivity that sped up the US economy for several years. It also rendered companies or even industries largely redundant — from travel agents and stockbrokers to classified advertising and newspapers, or video rental stores. Economists expect AI would deliver higher productivity,
RSS