The TAIEX yesterday rallied 1.68 percent to close at 22,042.69, boosted by the US Federal Reserve’s cuts to its key interest rates for the first time in four years, dealers said.
Turnover totaled NT$327.71 billion (US$10.26 billion).
Amid hopes of increasing liquidity, investors in Taiwan rushed to pick up large-cap stocks across the board, led by the bellwether electronics sector, after an initially weak start, dealers added.
Photo: CNA
After wrapping up a two-day policymaking meeting, the Fed lowered its key interest rates by 50 basis points — the higher end of the market’s estimate — to a range between 4.75 percent and 5 percent.
“Uncertainties over the Fed policy have been removed,” Moore Securities Investment Consulting analyst Adam Lin said.
“More importantly, the Fed emphasized that the US economy remains solid, despite the outsized rate cut,” Lin said.
“In addition to the positive signs on the regional markets, US stock futures moving higher points to a higher opening in the spot markets later in the day,” he said.
“So, investors looked to pick up bargains following earlier losses on hopes that the Fed relaxing its monetary policy would lead to more market liquidity and higher share prices,” he added.
The electronics index rose 1.86 percent with the semiconductor sub-index up 1.9 percent after contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) gained 2.02 percent to close at the day’s high of NT$960.00. TSMC’s gains contributed about 155 points to the TAIEX’s rise.
Buying also spread to other semiconductor stocks, with smartphone chip designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科) rising 1.36 percent to close at NT$1,120.
In addition, highly priced IC stocks in particular attracted stronger interest, including application-specific IC Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯), which rose 4.65 percent to end at NT$2,365.00.
Bucking the upturn, United Microelectronics Corp (聯電), a smaller contract chipmaker, lost 0.19 percent to close at NT $53.70, and IC packaging and testing services provider ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控) dropped 0.33 percent to end at NT$152.00.
Continued optimism in artificial intelligence (AI) development pushed up AI-related stocks, dealers said.
Second to TSMC in terms of market value, iPhone assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), which also produces AI servers, gained 1.44 percent to close at NT$176.50, and Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), another major AI server supplier, rose 1.20 percent to end at NT$253.
“Non-tech stocks also rode the waves of rising liquidity to push up the TAIEX further by the end of the session,” Lin said.
The petrochemical index rose 1.31 percent on its low valuation with Nan Ya Plastics Corp (南亞塑膠) rising 1.9 percent to close at NT$42.95, Formosa Chemicals & Fibre Corp (台灣化學纖維) gaining 0.86 percent to end at NT$41.00, and Formosa Plastics Corp (台灣塑膠) climbing 0.62 percent to close at NT$48.55. However, Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) ended down 0.19 percent at NT$51.40.
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.
RSS