Share prices closed little changed yesterday as bargain-hunting interest in financials and technology stocks in late trade offset continued profit-taking elsewhere, dealers said.
Dealers said post-election caution served as an excuse for the extended profit-taking, though there were expectations that the market would bounce back toward year's end on window-dressing activity.
Taiwan's mayoral elections at the weekend delivered a mixed result, adding to policy uncertainties.
The weighted index shed 8.26 points (0.11 percent) at 7,450.30, off a high of 7,494.49 and a low of 7,369.09. Turnover was NT$110.56 billion (US$3.4 billion).
"Assets-backed stocks took the hardest hit on lingering concerns over cross-strait policy following the mixed election outcomes," First Taisec Securities (一銀證券) manager Stanley Hsu said. "Generally speaking, we had a seesaw between profit-taking and bargain-hunting for the broad market today."
He said investors had shifted their focus to laggard stocks.
"We probably will see more consolidation for the rest of this week before liquidity-powered interest returns to the market next week," Hsu added.
High Tech Computer Corp (
ProMOS Technologies Inc (茂德科技) rose NT$0.15 to NT$14.05 after a report that it has no objections to United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) taking one or two seats on its board.
UMC fell NT$0.30 to NT$19.05, while rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) gained NT$0.70 to NT$64.90.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
VERTICAL INTEGRATION: The US fabless company’s acquisition of the data center manufacturer would not affect market competition, the Fair Trade Commission said The Fair Trade Commission has approved Advanced Micro Devices Inc’s (AMD) bid to fully acquire ZT International Group Inc for US$4.9 billion, saying it would not hamper market competition. As AMD is a fabless company that designs central processing units (CPUs) used in consumer electronics and servers, while ZT is a data center manufacturer, the vertical integration would not affect market competition, the commission said in a statement yesterday. ZT counts hyperscalers such as Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc and Google among its major clients and plays a minor role in deciding the specifications of data centers, given the strong bargaining power of
INDUSTRY LEADER: INDUSTRY LEADER: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
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