Taiwanese shares rose yesterday as investors responded to an overnight rally in the US triggered by the US Federal Reserve ruling out the possibility of overly aggressive rate hikes later in the year, dealers said.
The bellwether electronics sector attracted buying throughout the session as investors searched for bargains among heavily affected tech heavyweights, while the financial sector came under pressure to cap the upturn on the broader market, they said.
The TAIEX closed up 130.29 points, or 0.79 percent, at 16,696.12. Turnover totaled NT$250.848 billion (US$8.5 billion), with foreign institutional investors buying a net NT$3.83 billion of shares on the main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed.
Photo: CNA
“The gains on the US markets came as investors felt relieved as the Fed did not appear as hawkish as previously expected,” Hua Nan Securities Co (華南永昌證券) analyst Lu Chin-wei said.
After a two-day policymaking meeting, which concluded overnight, the Fed raised its key interest rates by 50 basis points after a 25 basis point hike in March.
However, Fed Chair Jerome Powell ruled out more aggressive action, saying that the committee was not considering a 75 basis point increase.
“The 50 basis point rate hike at the May meeting had been widely anticipated by the markets worldwide. Now, Powell’s remarks simply prompted investors at home and abroad to buy, and in Taipei, tech heavyweights got a boost from reduced worries over a more aggressive Fed,” Lu said.
The electronics sector rose 1.29 percent and accounted for about 54 percent of yesterday’s total turnover, with the semiconductor subindex up 1.70 percent.
The transportation and steel sectors also rose 0.95 percent and 1.16 percent respectively, but the financial sector underperformed the TAIEX, closing down 1.02 percent.
“Judging from today’s movement, I suggest investors to stay alert over the weakness in the financial sector. The interest rate hike leads had been largely reflected in financial stocks’ recent gains,” Lu said. “The local main board is likely to rebound further, but if the TAIEX fails to close above 17,000 points, the gains would not be strong enough to lead the market to return to an uptrend at a time of a rate hike cycle.”
South Korea’s equity benchmark yesterday crossed a new milestone just a month after surpassing the once-unthinkable 5,000 mark as surging global memory demand powers the country’s biggest chipmakers. The KOSPI advanced as much as 2.6 percent to a record 6,123, with Samsung Electronics Co and SK Hynix Inc each gaining more than 2 percent. With the benchmark now up 45 percent this year, South Korea’s stock market capitalization has also moved past France’s, following last month’s overtaking of Germany’s. Long overlooked by foreign funds, despite being undervalued, South Korean stocks have now emerged as clear winners in the global market. The so-called “artificial intelligence
‘SEISMIC SHIFT’: The researcher forecast there would be about 1.1 billion mobile shipments this year, down from 1.26 billion the prior year and erasing years of gains The global smartphone market is expected to contract 12.9 percent this year due to the unprecedented memorychip shortage, marking “a crisis like no other,” researcher International Data Corp (IDC) said. The new forecast, a dramatic revision down from earlier estimates, gives the latest accounting of the ongoing memory crunch that is affecting every corner of the electronics industry. The demand for advanced memory to power artificial intelligence (AI) tasks has drained global supply until well into next year and jeopardizes the business model of many smartphone makers. IDC forecast about 1.1 billion mobile shipments this year, down from 1.26 billion the prior
People stand in a Pokemon store in Tokyo on Thursday. One of the world highest-grossing franchises is celebrated its 30th anniversary yesterday.
Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek’s (深度求索) latest AI model, set to be released as soon as next week, was trained on Nvidia Corp’s most advanced AI chip, the Blackwell, a senior official of US President Donald Trump’s administration said on Monday, in what could represent a violation of US export controls. The US believes DeepSeek will remove the technical indicators that might reveal its use of American AI chips, the official said, adding that the Blackwells are likely clustered at its data center in Inner Mongolia, an autonomous region of China. The person declined to say how the US government received
RSS