The Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) is focusing on attracting a new crop of innovation and technology companies in an effort to build investor interest and diversify the nation’s equity market, an official said on Thursday.
Trading on the TWSE is dominated by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which accounts for one-third of the weighting in the benchmark TAIEX.
However, the creation of the Taiwan Innovation board, which groups companies in silos such as green energy, digital services, lifestyle and leisure industries, has helped investors better identify their areas of interest, TWSE chairman and CEO Sherman Lin (林修銘) said in an interview in New York.
Photo: Tu Chien-jung, Taipei Times
There is no plan to artificially limit TSMC’s dominance in the index. Rather, the idea is that the massive chipmaker would help attract smaller, newer companies to the exchange, making the index more balanced and diversified, Lin said.
However, this evolution would not happen overnight.
“Things cannot change suddenly,” Lin said.
Lin is meeting with institutional investors and asset managers in New York and Boston this week, urging portfolio managers to look beyond TSMC to its smaller and newer peers, which have the potential to grow as big as the chipmaking giant — the main supplier for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp.
US foreign investors accounted for more than 40 percent of foreign capital in Taiwan’s stock market, making it the exchange’s largest source of foreign investment.
TWSE is also exploring the possibility of cross listing exchange-traded funds to track Japanese and Taiwanese securities in each other’s markets, Lin said.
The stock exchange operator has already launched similar products with South Korea’s stock exchange.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
PRESSURE EXPECTED: The appreciation of the NT dollar reflected expectations that Washington would press Taiwan to boost its currency against the US dollar, dealers said Taiwan’s export-oriented semiconductor and auto part manufacturers are expecting their margins to be affected by large foreign exchange losses as the New Taiwan dollar continued to appreciate sharply against the US dollar yesterday. Among major semiconductor manufacturers, ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光), the world’s largest integrated circuit (IC) packaging and testing services provider, said that whenever the NT dollar rises NT$1 against the greenback, its gross margin is cut by about 1.5 percent. The NT dollar traded as strong as NT$29.59 per US dollar before trimming gains to close NT$0.919, or 2.96 percent, higher at NT$30.145 yesterday in Taipei trading
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