A total of 33 single-stock futures (SSF) on financial firms, electronics companies and traditional industries were listed for the first time on the Taiwan Futures Exchange (TAIFEX) yesterday.
TAIFEX is the world’s 23rd futures exchange to trade SSFs, which is also the 21st financial product offered by the exchange since it began trading futures on Taiwanese stock indices in 1998.
“The listing of SSFs marks a significant step in the domestic futures market,” Taiwan Futures Exchange Corp chairman Joseph Tsai (蔡慶年) told a launch ceremony.
HEDGING
“SSFs will serve as a more precise hedge instrument for individual stocks,” Tsai said.
Single-stock futures are futures contracts for an underlying stock, which can be traded on margin instead of the underlying stock, thereby offering higher leverage.
Also speaking at yesterday’s ceremony, Taiwan Securities Association (券商公會) chairman Hwang Min-juh (黃敏助) said that the global transaction volume of SSFs grew 59.9 percent year-on-year in 2008 to more than 1.15 billion contracts, outstripping a 13.2 percent growth in the world’s futures market.
“SSFs are based on individual stocks rather than the entire stock index, so they can reduce tracking errors caused by using stock index futures as well as enhance the effects of a hedge,” Hwang said.
The number of underlying stocks will be adjusted on a quarterly basis based on market demand and the principle of fairness, TAIFEX president Steve Wang (王中愷) said.
CHIP WAR: Tariffs on Taiwanese chips would prompt companies to move their factories, but not necessarily to the US, unleashing a ‘global cross-sector tariff war’ US President Donald Trump would “shoot himself in the foot” if he follows through on his recent pledge to impose higher tariffs on Taiwanese and other foreign semiconductors entering the US, analysts said. Trump’s plans to raise tariffs on chips manufactured in Taiwan to as high as 100 percent would backfire, macroeconomist Henry Wu (吳嘉隆) said. He would “shoot himself in the foot,” Wu said on Saturday, as such economic measures would lead Taiwanese chip suppliers to pass on additional costs to their US clients and consumers, and ultimately cause another wave of inflation. Trump has claimed that Taiwan took up to
A start-up in Mexico is trying to help get a handle on one coastal city’s plastic waste problem by converting it into gasoline, diesel and other fuels. With less than 10 percent of the world’s plastics being recycled, Petgas’ idea is that rather than letting discarded plastic become waste, it can become productive again as fuel. Petgas developed a machine in the port city of Boca del Rio that uses pyrolysis, a thermodynamic process that heats plastics in the absence of oxygen, breaking it down to produce gasoline, diesel, kerosene, paraffin and coke. Petgas chief technology officer Carlos Parraguirre Diaz said that in
SUPPORT: The government said it would help firms deal with supply disruptions, after Trump signed orders imposing tariffs of 25 percent on imports from Canada and Mexico The government pledged to help companies with operations in Mexico, such as iPhone assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), shift production lines and investment if needed to deal with higher US tariffs. The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday announced measures to help local firms cope with the US tariff increases on Canada, Mexico, China and other potential areas. The ministry said that it would establish an investment and trade service center in the US to help Taiwanese firms assess the investment environment in different US states, plan supply chain relocation strategies and
Japan intends to closely monitor the impact on its currency of US President Donald Trump’s new tariffs and is worried about the international fallout from the trade imposts, Japanese Minister of Finance Katsunobu Kato said. “We need to carefully see how the exchange rate and other factors will be affected and what form US monetary policy will take in the future,” Kato said yesterday in an interview with Fuji Television. Japan is very concerned about how the tariffs might impact the global economy, he added. Kato spoke as nations and firms brace for potential repercussions after Trump unleashed the first salvo of