Hong Kong stocks fell on Friday, led down by property and information technology (IT) firms tracking their Chinese peers, with sentiment dented by Wall Street’s weakness on concerns about the progress of US tax reform.
At close of trade, the Hang Seng index was down 318.27 points, or 1.09 percent, at 28,848.11. The Hang Seng China Enterprises index fell 1.44 percent to 11,365.92.
The sub-index of the Hang Seng tracking energy shares dipped 1.2 percent while the IT sector dipped 1.71 percent, the financial sector was 1.22 percent lower and property sector dipped 0.8 percent.
The top gainer on Hang Seng was Galaxy Entertainment Group (銀河娛樂), up 1.48 percent, while the biggest loser was Country Garden Holdings Co (碧桂園), which was down 2.85 percent.
China’s main Shanghai Composite index closed down 0.8 percent at 3,266.1503 points while its blue-chip CSI300 index ended down 1.12 percent.
So far this year, the Hang Seng index has gained 32.57 percent, while China’s H-share index rose 22.7 percent. As of Friday’s close, the Hang Seng has declined 0.04 percent this month.
The weighted index on the Taiwan Stock Exchange on Friday ended down 46.57 points, or 0.44 percent, at 10,491.44. The index is up 0.9 percent from last week’s 10,398.62 points.
MSCI Asia-Pacific Index on Friday fell 1 percent to 170 points, up 0.5 percent from last week’s 169.13 points.
About 2.06 billion Hang Seng index shares were traded on Friday, about 103.7 percent of the market’s 30-day moving average of 1.99 billion shares a day.
The volume traded in the previous trading session was 2.02 billion.
At close, China’s A-shares were trading at a premium of 29.42 percent over the Hong Kong-listed H-shares.
The price-to-earnings ratio of the Hang Seng index was 13.3 as of the last full trading day while the dividend yield was 3 percent.
Japan’s TOPIX on Friday fell 0.8 percent at the close in Tokyo and was down 0.6 percent over the week.
The Nikkei 225 Stock Average declined 0.6 percent on Friday.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 Index fell 0.2 percent and South Korea’s KOSPI rose 0.5 percent.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg, staff writer and CNA
AI REVOLUTION: The event is to take place from Wednesday to Friday at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center’s halls 1 and 2 and would feature more than 1,100 exhibitors Semicon Taiwan, an annual international semiconductor exhibition, would bring leaders from the world’s top technology firms to Taipei this year, the event organizer said. The CEO Summit is to feature nine global leaders from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), Applied Materials Inc, Google, Samsung Electronics Co, SK Hynix Inc, Microsoft Corp, Interuniversity Microelectronic Centre and Marvell Technology Group Ltd, SEMI said in a news release last week. The top executives would delve into how semiconductors are positioned as the driving force behind global technological innovation amid the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, the organizer said. Among them,
Demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips should spur growth for the semiconductor industry over the next few years, the CEO of a major supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said, dismissing concerns that investors had misjudged the pace and extent of spending on AI. While the global chip market has grown about 8 percent annually over the past 20 years, AI semiconductors should grow at a much higher rate going forward, Scientech Corp (辛耘) chief executive officer Hsu Ming-chi (許明琪) told Bloomberg Television. “This booming of the AI industry has just begun,” Hsu said. “For the most prominent
Former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) yesterday warned against the tendency to label stakeholders as either “pro-China” or “pro-US,” calling such rigid thinking a “trap” that could impede policy discussions. Liu, an adviser to the Cabinet’s Economic Development Committee, made the comments in his keynote speech at the committee’s first advisers’ meeting. Speaking in front of Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰), National Development Council (NDC) Minister Paul Liu (劉鏡清) and other officials, Liu urged the public to be wary of falling into the “trap” of categorizing people involved in discussions into either the “pro-China” or “pro-US” camp. Liu,
Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) yesterday said Taiwan’s government plans to set up a business service company in Kyushu, Japan, to help Taiwanese companies operating there. “The company will follow the one-stop service model similar to the science parks we have in Taiwan,” Kuo said. “As each prefecture is providing different conditions, we will establish a new company providing services and helping Taiwanese companies swiftly settle in Japan.” Kuo did not specify the exact location of the planned company but said it would not be in Kumamoto, the Kyushu prefecture in which Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC, 台積電) has a
RSS