TAI PEI: Taiwan shares moved lower on Tuesday morning as investors here reacted to a plunge on Wall Street overnight amid worries over a looming trade war between Washington and Beijing as well as further volatility among U.S. tech stocks, dealers said.
The bellwether electronics sector led the downturn, with selling focusing on select large cap stocks, such as contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC).
Defensive telecom stocks and select old economy stocks showed resilience, however, preventing the broader market from falling further, they said.
As of 11:52 a.m., the weighted index on the Taiwan Stock Exchange, the Taiex, had fallen 90.72 points or 0.83 percent to 10,797.55 on turnover of NT$76.71 billion (US$2.64 billion).
The Taiex fell by as many as 112.82 points at one point in the morning after the Dow Jones Industrial Average dove 1.90 percent and the tech-heavy NASDAQ index plunged 2.74 percent overnight.
But with the Taiex falling below the 10,800-point mark, some bargain hunting emerged to cap the losses, dealers said.
“It seemed that the local market was somehow resilient compared with the heavy losses suffered by Wall Street overnight,” KGI Securities analyst Phil Chu said.
“But due to the steep slide in the Nasdaq, the local electronics sector still drove today’s downturn, led by TSMC,” Chu said.
As of 11:52 a.m., TSMC, the most heavily weighted stock in the local market, was down 1.22 percent at NT$243.50, with 21.39 million shares changing hands.
