Monday January 14, 3:05 PM
Taiwan stocks retreat on Wall Street, Fed comment
(adds details, active stocks)
sg.biz.yahoo.com
TAIPEI, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Taiwan stocks ended lower on Monday, after a decline in U.S. shares and cautious comments by U.S. Fed chief Alan Greenspan gave investors second thoughts on the local market's rally since early October.
Analysts said the comments underscored fears that the TAIEX
<.TWII> index had run too far ahead of fundamentals in its 72 percent climb from a nearly nine-year low on October 3 to a nine-month intraday high on Friday.
On Monday the index gave up 75.73 points, or 1.33 percent, to 5,611.86 on modest turnover of T$105.27 billion, down sharply from Friday's busy T$196.79 billion.
"Whether it is U.S. or Taiwan markets, Greenspan's comments will cast a little bit of a shadow over investor's hearts," said Lei Pei-yu, manager of Pacific Securities proprietary trading.
"I would still say the market is pulling back for a rest, but it's going to be a longer rest this time," he said. "My personal opinion is that we won't be able to hold 5,500 points."
Investors were already growing twitchy before the week began, with the index ending 3.13 percent lower on Friday after touching the nine-month high.
A 1.21 percent fall in the Nasdaq <.IXIC> along with a 0.80 percent in the Dow Jones average <.DJI> to below 10,000 points compounded their fears.
"It is still premature to conclude that the forces restraining economic activity here and abroad have abated enough to allow a steady recovery to take hold," the Federal Reserve chairman told a group of San Francisco corporate executives.
The engines behind the Taiwan index in its nearly 2-½ month rise -- makers of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips -- were among the day's heaviest decliners, giving back some of their 200 percent advance over the uptrend.
Winbond Electronics <2344.TW> dropped T$1.90 to T$25.60, falling the seven percent daily trading limit for a second straight session. Mosel Vitelic <2342.TW> also fell limit-down, ending at T$18.70. |
