The Ministry of Finance, the Financial Supervisory Commission and the National Development Council on Tuesday night reached a consensus on extending the transaction tax cut for day trading for two or three years after it expires at the end of this year, local media reported yesterday.
The three agencies will report the conclusion of their meeting to the Executive Yuan by the end of this month to finalize the extension plan, the reports said.
The government cut the tax for day trading from 0.003 percent to 0.0015 percent in 2017. With the tax cut set to come to an end at the end of this year, concern has risen that the impending end of the incentive led many day traders and investors in old economy stocks to dump their holdings in the past few days.
Photo: Kelson Wang, Taipei Times
However, investors seem optimistic about the tax cut extension, leading to buying yesterday of old economy stocks, including shipping and raw material stocks, Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang (黃國偉) said.
The bellwether electronics sector yesterday also reversed earlier losses, giving an additional boost to the broader market, Huang said.
Taiwanese shares yesterday recovered earlier heavy losses caused by volatility on US markets overnight to end a nine-session losing streak and finish the day above the 16,800-point mark, as bargain hunters took advantage of the initial downturn.
The TAIEX closed up 164.91 points, or 0.99 percent, at 16,826.27. Turnover was NT$417.49 billion (US$14.99 billion), with foreign institutional investors selling a net NT$2.24 billion of shares on the main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed.
“Further gains are possible before the TAIEX moves closer to the nearest technical resistance ahead of the 120-day moving average at around 16,960 points,” Huang said.
Sweeping policy changes under US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr are having a chilling effect on vaccine makers as anti-vaccine rhetoric has turned into concrete changes in inoculation schedules and recommendations, investors and executives said. The administration of US President Donald Trump has in the past year upended vaccine recommendations, with the country last month ending its longstanding guidance that all children receive inoculations against flu, hepatitis A and other diseases. The unprecedented changes have led to diminished vaccine usage, hurt the investment case for some biotechs, and created a drag that would likely dent revenues and
Global semiconductor stocks advanced yesterday, as comments by Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) at Davos, Switzerland, helped reinforce investor enthusiasm for artificial intelligence (AI). Samsung Electronics Co gained as much as 5 percent to an all-time high, helping drive South Korea’s benchmark KOSPI above 5,000 for the first time. That came after the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose more than 3 percent to a fresh record on Wednesday, with a boost from Nvidia. The gains came amid broad risk-on trade after US President Donald Trump withdrew his threat of tariffs on some European nations over backing for Greenland. Huang further
CULPRITS: Factors that affected the slip included falling global crude oil prices, wait-and-see consumer attitudes due to US tariffs and a different Lunar New Year holiday schedule Taiwan’s retail sales ended a nine-year growth streak last year, slipping 0.2 percent from a year earlier as uncertainty over US tariff policies affected demand for durable goods, data released on Friday by the Ministry of Economic Affairs showed. Last year’s retail sales totaled NT$4.84 trillion (US$153.27 billion), down about NT$9.5 billion, or 0.2 percent, from 2024. Despite the decline, the figure was still the second-highest annual sales total on record. Ministry statistics department deputy head Chen Yu-fang (陳玉芳) said sales of cars, motorcycles and related products, which accounted for 17.4 percent of total retail rales last year, fell NT$68.1 billion, or
MediaTek Inc (聯發科) shares yesterday notched their best two-day rally on record, as investors flock to the Taiwanese chip designer on excitement over its tie-up with Google. The Taipei-listed stock jumped 8.59 percent, capping a two-session surge of 19 percent and closing at a fresh all-time high of NT$1,770. That extended a two-month rally on growing awareness of MediaTek’s work on Google’s tensor processing units (TPUs), which are chips used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications. It also highlights how fund managers faced with single-stock limits on their holding of market titan Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) are diversifying into other AI-related firms.
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