Share prices closed up 1.20 percent in Taipei yesterday on high hopes that Taiwan and China will soon sign an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) after the two sides reached a consensus on the text of the accord over the weekend, dealers said.
The TAIEX rose 87.91 points to 7,387.40 after moving between 7,347.23 and 7,393.41, with turnover of NT$68.52 billion (US$2.11 billion).
The market opened 1.01 percent higher, in line with other regional markets boosted by Wall Street’s gains at the end of last week and the momentum accelerated as investors turned upbeat about Taiwan’s potential economic outlook after the proposed ECFA is signed, dealers said.
“The negotiations seem to have proceeded smoothly, prompting investors to leave behind earlier concerns that the agreement would not be signed in the middle of this year as scheduled,” said Henry Miao (苗台生), vice president of Hua Nan Securities Investment Management Co (華南永昌投顧).
Both the plastics and chemical and the textile sectors attracted large buying as investors anticipate the sectors will be included in the “early harvest” list, Miao said.
“However, I do not expect the local bourse will have much upside room ahead of the nearest technical resistance of 7,500 points unless Wall Street continues to make significant gains,” he said.
“In addition, concerns over the debt problems in Europe remain in place,” he said. “So, it won’t be easy for the market to overcome the technical hurdles anytime soon.”
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