Taiwanese shares hit a four-month low yesterday, closing down 1.81 percent and below 8,000 points, on weak confidence about the domestic economy and the threat of rising inflation, dealers said.
The weighted index was down 145.30 points at 7,902.44, off a low of 7,897.97 and a high of 8,088.38, on turnover of NT$95.41 billion (US$3.14 billion). The figure is the lowest the market has been since it hit 7,894.47 on Feb. 20.
Gainers outnumbered decliners by 420 to 1,886, with 378 stocks unchanged.
While Wall Street gained overnight, worries over rising local consumer prices prompted investors to cut positions after the local index opened higher, dealers said.
They said concerns over possible volatility in US markets remained in place as few could be sure how the US economy would perform amid high oil prices.
Selling picked up, in particular, as the index fell below the 8,000 points mark, Taiwan International Securities Corp (金鼎證券) analyst Andrew Teng (鄧安瀾) said.
Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co (元大投顧) analyst Young Wang agreed, saying many investors encountered pressing margin calls in late trade on the market downside to drag down the index further.
“Without clear indications in the US economy, cautious market sentiment continued to dominate the local bourse,” he said. “As the market has turned very weak technically, further declines are very likely in the short term.”
For the week to yesterday, the weighted index closed down 203.15 points, or 2.51 percent, after a 7.32 percent fall a week earlier.
Japanese technology giant Softbank Group Corp said Tuesday it has sold its stake in Nvidia Corp, raising US$5.8 billion to pour into other investments. It also reported its profit nearly tripled in the first half of this fiscal year from a year earlier. Tokyo-based Softbank said it sold the stake in Silicon Vally-based Nvidia last month, a move that reflects its shift in focus to OpenAI, owner of the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT. Softbank reported its profit in the April-to-September period soared to about 2.5 trillion yen (about US$13 billion). Its sales for the six month period rose 7.7 percent year-on-year
CRESTING WAVE: Companies are still buying in, but the shivers in the market could be the first signs that the AI wave has peaked and the collapse is upon the world Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported a new monthly record of NT$367.47 billion (US$11.85 billion) in consolidated sales for last month thanks to global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Last month’s figure represented 16.9 percent annual growth, the slowest pace since February last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 11 percent. Cumulative sales in the first 10 months of the year grew 33.8 percent year-on-year to NT$3.13 trillion, a record for the same period in the company’s history. However, the slowing growth in monthly sales last month highlights uncertainty over the sustainability of the AI boom even as
AI BOOST: Next year, the cloud and networking product business is expected to remain a key revenue pillar for the company, Hon Hai chairman Young Liu said Manufacturing giant Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday posted its best third-quarter profit in the company’s history, backed by strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers. Net profit expanded 17 percent annually to NT$57.67 billion (US$1.86 billion) from NT$44.36 billion, the company said. On a quarterly basis, net profit soared 30 percent from NT$44.36 billion, it said. Hon Hai, which is Apple Inc’s primary iPhone assembler and makes servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators, said earnings per share expanded to NT$4.15 from NT$3.55 a year earlier and NT$3.19 in the second quarter. Gross margin improved to 6.35 percent,
BUST FEARS: While a KMT legislator asked if an AI bubble could affect Taiwan, the DGBAS minister said the sector appears on track to continue growing The local property market has cooled down moderately following a series of credit control measures designed to contain speculation, the central bank said yesterday, while remaining tight-lipped about potential rule relaxations. Lawmakers in a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee voiced concerns to central bank officials that the credit control measures have adversely affected the government’s tax income and small and medium-sized property developers, with limited positive effects. Housing prices have been climbing since 2016, even when the central bank imposed its first set of control measures in 2020, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lo Ting-wei (羅廷瑋) said. “Since the second half of
RSS