Foreign institutional investors registered net fund inflows last month, reversing four consecutive months of net fund outflows, after the Financial Supervisory Commission introduced restrictions on short selling on the stock market at the beginning of the month.
Data compiled by the commission showed foreign institutional investors recorded US$456 million in net fund inflows last month after US$577 million in net fund outflows in September.
The commission introduced three rounds of measures to restrict short selling over three weeks last month, citing the need to ameliorate volatility on the local equity market as foreign institutional investors continued to move funds out of the country in the wake of an aggressive rate-hike cycle by the US Federal Reserve.
Photo: CNA
In the latest round of tightening measures announced on Oct. 21, a stock that closed down by 3.5 percent or more in the previous session would prohibit investors from using the previous closing price or a lower price to short the stock by borrowing securities.
From June to September, foreign institutional investors registered US$18.84 billion in net fund outflows from Taiwan, and the average monthly net fund outflow has topped US$5 billion since July, as the interest-rate gap between the US and Taiwan has been widening.
Ahead of a 75 basis-point hike on Wednesday, the Fed had raised its key interest rates by 300 basis points since March. In contrast, Taiwan’s central bank has only increased rates by 50 basis points so far this year as domestic inflation is not as strong as in the US.
In a rush to park funds in US dollar denominated assets, foreign institutional investors recorded US$22.02 billion in net fund outflows in the first 10 months of this year.
From January to last month, foreign institutional investors sold a net NT$1.19 trillion (US$36.97 billion) on the local equity market, the commission said.
The National Stabilization Fund’s governing committee on July 12 authorized a NT$500 billion fund to shore up share prices.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to