Soft Start Anticipated For Taiwan Stock Market
(RTTNews) - The Taiwan stock market headed south again on Friday, one session after ending the four-day losing streak in which it had stumbled more than 200 points or 1.2 percent. The Taiwan Stock Exchange now sits just beneath the 17,370-point plateau and it's expected to open lower again on Monday.
The global forecast for the Asian markets is broadly negative on fears of lockdown measures following the rapid spread of a new COVID variant. The European and U.S. markets were sharply lower and the Asian bourses figure to open in similar fashion.
The TSE finished sharply lower on Friday following losses from the financial shares, technology stocks and cement companies.
For the day, the index plunged 284.81 points or 1.61 percent to finish at 17,369.39 after trading between 17,330.44 and 17,641.79.
Among the actives, Cathay Financial stumbled 2.27 percent, while Mega Financial slumped 1.74 percent, CTBC Financial dropped 1.00 percent, Fubon Financial eased 0.13 percent, First Financial lost 1.26 percent, E Sun Financial shed 1.08 percent, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company skidded 1.16 percent, United Microelectronics Corporation sank 0.79 percent, Hon Hai Precision and Formosa Plastic both retreated 1.43 percent, Largan Precision declined 1.22 percent, Catcher Technology surrendered 2.26 percent, MediaTek tanked 2.90 percent, Delta Electronics tumbled 2.70 percent, Asia Cement dipped 0.24 percent and Taiwan Cement weakened 1.38 percent.
The lead from Wall Street suggests heavy selling pressure as the major averages opened sharpy lower on Friday and remained that way throughout the session.
The Dow plummeted 905.04 points or 2.53 percent to finish at 34,899.34, while the NASDAQ plunged 353.57 points or 2.23 percent to close at 15,491.66 and the S&P 500 tumbled 106.84 points or 2.27 percent to end at 4,594.62.
For the week, the NASDAQ dropped 3.5 percent, the Dow sank 2.2 percent and the S&P retreated 2.0 percent.
The sell-off on Wall Street followed reports a new coronavirus variant has been detected in South Africa. The news, which comes amid a surge in new Covid-19 cases in Europe, raised concerns the pandemic could continue to wreak havoc on the global economy.
Crude oil prices plummeted on Friday, sending the most active crude futures contract to their biggest single-session fall this year as reports of the new coronavirus variant raised concerns about the outlook for energy demand. West Texas Intermediate Crude oil futures for December ended down $10.24 or 13 percent at $68.15 a barrel, the biggest single-session loss since April 2020.
