The TAIEX is likely to hover between 13,000 and 15,000 points in the first and second quarters of next year as it enters consolidation mode, before rallying in the third quarter and climbing to 16,800 points in the fourth quarter, Capital Investment Management Corp (群益證投顧) said yesterday.
The TAIEX yesterday closed up 1.06 percent at 14,483.07 points, a record high, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed.
The index is expected to face correction pressure in the first quarter of next year, which is usually a low season for the local technology sector, Capital Investment chairman Andrew Tsai (蔡明彥) said in a media briefing in Taipei.
Photo: Vanessa Cho, Taipei Times
The correction is expected to last into the second quarter, Tsai said, adding that investors tend to sell stocks with low-yield dividends before May, the beginning of the tax season, so they could pay less tax.
“While investors usually hold stocks with yields of at least 4 percent during the tax season, as the high yields would offset higher tax payments, there would be fewer stocks with high yields next year as most companies would remain cautious,” he said.
The TAIEX is projected to move to a range of 14,000 to 15,500 points in the third quarter, as the local technology sector would benefit from more orders in the peak season, Tsai said.
“Experts have predicted that herd immunity [for COVID-19] would be achieved in the third quarter, which would have a mixed effect on the market. Investors would feel relieved and be more optimistic, but governments might consider ending their quantitative easing programs,” he said.
Another risk the local stock market would face is volatility in the US stock market, which would be affected by US president-elect Joe Biden’s policies, Washington’s tax increases on the rich, tighter regulations on Facebook Inc, Apple Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Netflix Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google, and an overheating of the initial public offering market, Tsai said.
If the US stock market does not crash and governments extend their quantitative easing programs, it is possible that the TAIEX would advance to 16,800 points at most in the fourth quarter, he said.
Capital Investment has an upbeat outlook for local biotech companies, due to rising demand for COVID-19 test reagents and vaccines. It is optimistic about the marine shipping sector on the back of robust demand, as well as sports and leisure equipment companies thanks to higher demand for fitness products, it said.
It also has an upbeat outlook for airlines, as border controls are expected to relax next year, and people might opt to travel on regional routes, such as from Taiwan to Southeast Asia, it said.
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
The US on Friday penalized two Chinese firms that acquired US chipmaking equipment for China’s top chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯國際), including them among 32 entities that were added to the US Department of Commerce’s restricted trade list, a US government posting showed. Twenty-three of the 32 are in China. GMC Semiconductor Technology (Wuxi) Co (吉姆西半導體科技) and Jicun Semiconductor Technology (Shanghai) Co (吉存半導體科技) were placed on the list, formally known as the Entity List, for acquiring equipment for SMIC Northern Integrated Circuit Manufacturing (Beijing) Corp (中芯北方積體電路) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International (Beijing) Corp (中芯北京), the US Federal Register posting said. The
India’s ban of online money-based games could drive addicts to unregulated apps and offshore platforms that pose new financial and social risks, fantasy-sports gaming experts say. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government banned real-money online games late last month, citing financial losses and addiction, leading to a shutdown of many apps offering paid fantasy cricket, rummy and poker games. “Many will move to offshore platforms, because of the addictive nature — they will find alternate means to get that dopamine hit,” said Viren Hemrajani, a Mumbai-based fantasy cricket analyst. “It [also] leads to fraud and scams, because everything is now
MORTGAGE WORRIES: About 34% of respondents to a survey said they would approach multiple lenders to pay for a home, while 29.2% said they would ask family for help New housing projects in Taiwan’s six special municipalities, as well as Hsinchu city and county, are projected to total NT$710.65 billion (US$23.61 billion) in the upcoming fall sales season, a record 30 percent decrease from a year earlier, as tighter mortgage rules prompt developers to pull back, property listing platform 591.com (591新建案) said yesterday. The number of projects has also fallen to 312, a more than 20 percent decrease year-on-year, underscoring weakening sentiment and momentum amid lingering policy and financing headwinds. New Taipei City and Taoyuan bucked the downturn in project value, while Taipei, Hsinchu city and county, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung
RSS