The TAIEX moved marginally down on its last trading day of the year, after rising 23.7 percent over the past 12 months, the third-largest increase for a single year, Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) data showed.
The index initially hit an intra-session high at 18,291.25 points yesterday, but gradually fell before closing down 0.16 percent at 18,218.84, with turnover of NT$263.167 billion (US$9.5 billion), the data showed.
Starting at 14,720.25 points on Jan. 4, the TAIEX advanced 3,486.31 points this year, compared with an increase of 2,735.39 points last year.
Photo: CNA
The index registered its highest annual increase of 4,505 points in 1989 and the second-highest in 2009, when it advanced 3,596 points, exchange data showed.
The TAIEX stood above 17,000 points on 130 of this year’s 244 trading days and above 18,000 points for five days, Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) data showed.
Average daily turnover surged 88.7 percent from a year earlier to NT$476.3 billion, while the number of investors with trading accounts rose 6.5 percent, from 11.23 million at the end of last year to 11.96 million on Nov. 30, FSC data showed.
The TAIEX outperformed its Asian peers this year, with Japan’s Nikkei index gaining 5.33 percent, South Korea’s KOSPI index rising 4.17 percent, Singapore’s Strait Times index gaining 10.35 percent and China’s Shanghai Composite Index rising 3.57 percent, commission data showed.
This year’s rise in the local index is among the highest in the world, including the Philadelphia semiconductor index, which rose 43.7 percent; Standard & Poor’s 500 index, which advanced 29.5 percent; France’s CAC40, rising 28.1 percent; and the NASDAQ Composite, advancing 24.2 percent.
“Local stocks continued to move upward, despite foreign institutional investors’ net sale of NT$453.9 billion of shares this year,” PGIM Securities Investment Trust Enterprise Co (保德信投信) fund manager Bevan Yeh (葉獻文) said in a statement yesterday.
It was the third-highest net sale by foreign investors after NT$539.4 billion last year and NT$470 billion in 2008, he said.
PGIM holds an upbeat outlook for local stocks next year on the back of the nation’s strong exports, Yeh said.
SinoPac Securities Co (永豐金證券) said that foreign institutional investors bought a net NT$84.8 billion of local shares this month, about 30 percent of which were Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) shares.
Local equities are likely to continue attracting investors next month on the back of strong corporate fundamentals, SinoPac said in a statement.
In Italy’s storied gold-making hubs, jewelers are reworking their designs to trim gold content as they race to blunt the effect of record prices and appeal to shoppers watching their budgets. Gold prices hit a record high on Thursday, surging near US$5,600 an ounce, more than double a year ago as geopolitical concerns and jitters over trade pushed investors toward the safe-haven asset. The rally is putting undue pressure on small artisans as they face mounting demands from customers, including international brands, to produce cheaper items, from signature pieces to wedding rings, according to interviews with four independent jewelers in Italy’s main
Macronix International Co (旺宏), the world’s biggest NOR flash memory supplier, yesterday said it would spend NT$22 billion (US$699.1 million) on capacity expansion this year to increase its production of mid-to-low-density memory chips as the world’s major memorychip suppliers are phasing out the market. The company said its planned capital expenditures are about 11 times higher than the NT$1.8 billion it spent on new facilities and equipment last year. A majority of this year’s outlay would be allocated to step up capacity of multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory chips, which are used in embedded multimedia cards (eMMC), a managed
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has talked up the benefits of a weaker yen in a campaign speech, adopting a tone at odds with her finance ministry, which has refused to rule out any options to counter excessive foreign exchange volatility. Takaichi later softened her stance, saying she did not have a preference for the yen’s direction. “People say the weak yen is bad right now, but for export industries, it’s a major opportunity,” Takaichi said on Saturday at a rally for Liberal Democratic Party candidate Daishiro Yamagiwa in Kanagawa Prefecture ahead of a snap election on Sunday. “Whether it’s selling food or
In the wake of strong global demand for AI applications, Taiwan’s export-oriented economy accelerated with the composite index of economic indicators flashing the first “red” light in December for one year, indicating the economy is in booming mode, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Moreover, the index of leading indicators, which gauges the potential state of the economy over the next six months, also moved higher in December amid growing optimism over the outlook, the NDC said. In December, the index of economic indicators rose one point from a month earlier to 38, at the lower end of the “red” light.
RSS