Share prices closed 1.28 percent lower yesterday on concerns about the impact of domestic fuel price hikes, dealers said.
They said transport and industrial firms fell sharply on worries that they would face higher operating or production costs.
The weighted index closed down 112.66 points at the day’s low of 8,665.73 on turnover of NT$111.66 billion (US$3.66 billion).
Decliners outnumbered advancers 1,916 to 498, while 270 stocks were unchanged. Five stocks closed limit-up, while 40 were limit-down.
Alex Huang (黃國偉), an assistant vice president at Mega International Investment Services (兆豐國際投顧), said that the fuel price increases that took effect yesterday could lead to further hikes down the road.
“The latest price adjustments do not fully reflect crude oil price surges,” he said. “There are worries about further [hikes] going forward.”
Higher fuel prices raised inflation worries and stoked concerns about the impact on the economy, Huang said, adding inflation and relations with China will continue to dominate the local bourse in the near term.
Meanwhile, ING Securities Investment & Trust Co (安泰證券投信) — which manages the equivalent of about US$13 billion — thinks the TAIEX will gain to 12,000 in a year on improving relations with China and the new government’s economic policies.
“The previous political tension was an obstacle in joining the China growth story,” Steve Chu (鄒鴻圖), Taipei-based head of equities at the company said yesterday in Seoul.
“Tax reform and other economic policies will help boost domestic demand and attract money to Taiwan,” he said.
The TAIEX has added 1.88 percent this year, one of two Asian benchmarks to post a gain.
Chu is increasing his holdings of financials and other stocks related to the domestic economy.
Lower taxes will encourage Taiwan’s investors to invest in Taiwan’s assets rather than overseas, helping boost the economy, he said.
Foreign investors are also buying Taiwanese stocks this year after being net sellers in the previous two years, Chu said.
“The reversal of fund flows has just begun,” he said.
Earlier this month, the government raised its target for this year’s economic growth from 4.8 percent to 5 percent.
Chu said he also expects growth of “around 5 percent” on improving relations with China, and as investment in infrastructure projects help offset the negative impact of inflation.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
RSS