Stocks fell as chipmakers such as United Microelectronics Corp (
UMC fell NT$1.50, or 3.4 percent, to NT$43.30. HSBC Securities (Asia) Ltd cut its 2002 earnings forecast for the world's No. 2 made-to-order chipmaker by more than a tenth, citing lower third-quarter sales growth as customers cut back orders.
"Chipmakers' third-quarter orders aren't so clear," said Jeff Chen, who manages NT$3.8 billion (US$109 million) in stocks at E. Sun Securities Investment Trust Co (
The TAIEX fell 43.28, or 0.8 percent, to 5,527.80. Within the index, about 23 stocks rose for every 20 that fell. The total value of trade was NT$50.3 billion (US$1.5 billion), almost three-fifths below the six-month daily average of NT$120.7 billion.
The index gained almost nine-tenths between Oct. 3 and April 24 on signs of a US economic recovery. It's fallen 14 percent since then on concern that recovery may lag expectations, damping a revival in companies' earnings.
Amtran Technology Co (
AU Optronics Corp (
Cosmos Bank Taiwan (
Elitegroup Computer Systems Co (精英電腦) rose NT$1, or 0.6 percent, to NT$170. The nation's third-largest computer-motherboard maker forecast sales in May grew a tenth to about NT$5 billion from April, which marked the bottom in terms of month-on-month sales, a Chinese-language newspaper reported, citing Chairman Chiang Kuo-ming (蔣國明). Demand will revive starting at the end of June, the paper cited Chiang as saying.
Silicon Integrated Systems Corp (
United Epitaxy Co (
VIA Technologies Inc (
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has