The New Taiwan dollar declined by the most in more than a week on concern the global economic slowdown will cut demand for Taiwan’s electronics exports. Bonds rose.
The currency fell against the US dollar as a report last week showed exports fell 8.3 percent last month from a year earlier, the biggest drop in more than three years, on weaker demand from China.
“The market is consolidating holdings for the time being, both in stocks and currencies,” said Irene Cheung, a corporate director for local-markets trading at ABN Amro Bank NV in Singapore. “There will be further downside in the Taiwan dollar. The market is looking at the real problems that the economy is facing.”
The currency fell 0.2 percent to NT$32.874 as of the 4pm close, Taipei Forex Inc said. It earlier touched NT$32.898.
The government might help chipmakers with short-term financing, the Chinese-language United Evening News reported on Monday, citing Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Shih Yen-shiang (施顏祥).
Taiwan’s 10-year bonds rose on speculation the central bank will cut interest rates.
Ten-year bond yields fell to the lowest since January 2006 after the central bank cut interest rates for the fourth time in seven weeks on Friday and said “the risk of an economic slowdown has risen.”
“Bonds are in a long-term bull market,” said Sam Chang, a debt trader at Polaris Securities Co (寶來證券) in Taipei. “The central bank will probably keep cutting interest rates.”
The yield on the benchmark 2.125 percent bond maturing September 2018 declined 7.7 basis points to 1.743 percent as of the 1:30pm close in Taipei, the GRETAI Securities Market said.
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
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.