The TAIEX yesterday tumbled 3.15 percent, or 557.83 points, to 17,178.69, while the New Taiwan dollar fell 0.48 percent against the US dollar to NT$28.25, an 11-month low, dragged by capital flight as the US threatened more drastic sanctions against Russia and oil prices skyrocketed, traders said.
Turnover on the main board was NT$456.783 billion (US$16.17 billion), the highest in more than seven months, Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) data showed, while transaction volume hit a 13-year-high of US$2.533 billion on the Taipei Forex Inc during the session.
Minister of Finance Su Jain-rong (蘇建榮) and TWSE officials called for calm amid escalating tensions between Russia and Ukraine, saying that the local board, although pummeled by panic sell-offs, remained healthy in light of active trading and strong economic bellwethers.
Photo: CNA
The ministry is today to release trade data for last month and exports are expected to have grown, despite Lunar New Year holiday disruptions, Su said.
The state-run National Stabilization Fund is closely monitoring the local board and would intervene whenever it sees fit, Su said.
He dismissed claims that the NT$500 billion fund would stay on the sidelines unless the TAIEX slumps below the 10-year moving average.
“There is no need for preconditions to activate the fund,” Su said.
Foreign investors continued to move funds out of Taiwan yesterday, with portfolio managers cutting holdings in local shares by NT$82.24 billion, the second-largest in history and compared with net sales of NT$63.44 billion last week, TWSE data showed.
Mutual funds increased net positions by NT$7.63 billion yesterday, while proprietary traders offloaded NT$3.68 billion of shares, exchange data showed.
Technology heavyweights were again hit by concerns over energy sanctions, with contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) coming into focus as investors unloaded liquid stocks with relatively high valuations.
TSMC lost 3.19 percent to close at NT$576. TSMC’s downturn contributed more than 150 points to the TAIEX’s decline yesterday, and led the electronics sector to drop 3.49 percent and the semiconductor sub-index to lose 3.65 percent.
Amid rising crude prices, Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) appeared resilient compared with tech stocks, ending the day unchanged at NT$100.5, while stocks in the steel industry performed better than expected, which traders attributed to expectations that the Western sanctions on Russia would reduce the global steel supply and improve the pricing power of suppliers elsewhere.
The financial sector faced heavy selling, falling 2.74 percent to add pressure to the broader market, traders said.
State-run First Securities Investment Trust Co (第一金投信) said the TAIEX would remain weak in next three months, as it has fallen below the yearly moving average.
The latest panic sell-offs came after the US threatened to impose an oil embargo on Russia and international crude prices soared to near US$140 per barrel, fueling concerns that inflation would erode corporate profits, First Securities said.
Technology shares bore the brunt, as they have higher price evaluations and could be further affected by shortages of component raw materials, a significant portion of which is controlled by Russia, First Securities said.
Investors tend to seek safety in the US dollar in times of global turmoil, dealers said.
TWSE said that the war in Ukraine has little bearing on Taiwan, whose economy is expected to grow by more than 4 percent this year on top of a 6.28 percent pickup last year.
Listed companies in January reported an 8.92 percent increase in cumulative revenue, and would soon distribute cash and stock dividends in line with last year’s impressive earnings, the exchange said.
Additional reporting by CNA
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
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
RSS