Taiwan Financial News

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. So iPhone buyers aren’t waiting around for better artificial-intelligence features. For Apple that is both good and bad news.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Foreign investors have spent much of this year cutting exposure to Indian equities, diverting some capital to Taiwan and South Korea amid an AI-driven rally and robust semiconductor earnings. However, recent selling in those East Asian markets has brought the conversation surrounding foreign flows back to India.According to Bloomberg data, Foreign portfolio investors have pulled nearly $23.4 billion from Indian equitiesso far this year, driven by stretched valuations, rupee weakness and softer earnings growth expectations.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.NEW DELHI: This month, India’s semiconductor push gathered momentum with Tata Electronics’ pact with Dutch major ASML and two new projects, a mini/micro-LED display fabrication unit in Dholera and an OSAT packaging facility in Surat.With nearly a dozen semiconductor initiatives now underway, how close is India to becoming self-reliant in chips?Tata Electronics’ pact with ASML, the world’s leading maker of chip lithography equipment, marks a key step in India’s entry into global semiconductor manufacturing by securing access to critical technology. Alongside the two projects announced in May—a micro-LED display fab in Dholera and an OSAT packaging facility in Surat with a combined investment of ₹3,936 crore—the move broadens India’s semiconductor base.The micro-LED fab positions India in advanced display manufacturing, while the OSAT unit helps plug a packaging gap, reducing dependence on Taiwan and Malaysia.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Coal is making a comeback.Countries around the world are returning to the highly polluting but reliable source of power after the Iran war effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz and cut off around 20% of global liquefied natural gas supplies.Taiwan is restarting idled coal-fired power plants and South Korea boosted the amount of electricity it generated from coal by more than a third last month. In Europe, Italy has put its coal plants on standby as it girds for a prolonged energy shock.Spot coal prices at Australia’s Newcastle port, a key supplier to Asia, have jumped 12% since the war started.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.IT WAS A tale of two summits. Meeting in China for the first time since 2017, Donald Trump and Xi Jinping committed to stabilising relations and suggested that they had reached new agreements on trade and other areas.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping spent their first day of bilateral talks on Thursday showing an eagerness to manage the economic rivalry between their countries.Trump talked about the possibility of increased economic ties, and Xi held out the possibility of U.S. companies enjoying “even broader prospects in China.”Even the most glaring point of friction in the talks – a warning from Xi that differences over Taiwan could lead to conflict and jeopardize the relationship – could be an opportunity to dial down the tensions if the two economic powerhouses find ways to navigate their complicated relationship.“Trump and Xi are staking out their positions on geopolitical issues that are of particular importance to each of them, while signaling some openness to being more accommodative on other subjects like trade, technology, and market opening,” says Eswar Prasad, a Cornell economics professor and former head of the China division for the International Monetary Fund.China greeted Trump and a delegation of more than a dozen chief executives from U.S.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.BEIJING—President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping reunited on Thursday morning in Beijing, kicking off a summit centered on improving their economic relationship, as the war in Iran and U.S. commitment to Taiwan loom.Speaking inside the Great Hall of the People, both leaders projected optimism for two days of talks.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The likes of Intel and Micron Technology have powered the market higher in recent weeks but escalating geopolitical worries could scuttle the chip-stocks rally.In a research note published on Monday, Gavekal Research CEO Louis-Vincent Gave named the looming summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and China’s premier Xi Jinping as one reason for investors to feel cautious about the semiconductor sector.The two leaders are set to meet in China on Thursday and Friday, Beijing confirmed.Trump needs to replenish the U.S.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Quant Mutual Fund believes this year is about identifying undervalued and under-researched segments of the market while avoiding overcrowded trades.In the Mint Money Guru series, Quant Mutual Fund founder and chief investment officer Sandeep Tandon explains why he believes this is the biggest buying opportunity since the covid pandemic.It's largely a behaviour call coming from some analytics that we have built. The element of fear is very high. People are worried about crude prices, the rupee and the exit of foreign institutional investors (FIIs).

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.MUMBAI: Caution is returning to small-, and mid-cap stocks after last month’s sharp rally, with experts warning that stretched valuations could leave the segment vulnerable to even minor macroeconomic and earnings shocksThe BSE Smallcap index rose nearly 20% in April, while the BSE Midcap index gained almost 14%, their strongest monthly performances since May 2014. In comparison, the Sensex rose 7%.But the rebound has been uneven.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The weak performance of Indian shares hasn’t just dampened wealth creation, it has also put India’s stock market at risk of being overtaken in terms of capitalization by the bourses of smaller economies. Catching up fast are Taiwan and South Korea; the former’s market cap is now about $4.6 trillion, within sniffing distance of India’s $4.9 trillion, and South Korea’s is at about $4.2 trillion.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The Iran war has offered China, Russia and North Korea—the U.S.’s biggest security threats—a rare opportunity to learn about the capabilities and limitations of the U.S. military.The three powers have witnessed certain new American weapons in combat for the first time, including lightning-fast precision airstrikes assisted by artificial intelligence.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Nearly 70% of Indians lack meaningful health insurance. Our penetration rate— just 0.35% of GDP—is lower than that of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The conventional explanation is that Indians either do not understand insurance or cannot afford it.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Xi Jinping had just finished a lunch of herbed-ricotta ravioli at a secluded estate outside San Francisco in 2023 when his security agents sprang into action.Their mission: ensuring no trace of the Chinese leader’s DNA fell into foreign hands. The agents—measuring about 6-foot-3, dressed in identical dark suits—were observed grabbing Xi’s utensils and plate and spraying them with an unidentified liquid.Welcome to the unseen theater of great-power diplomacy, where a meeting of the two most powerful leaders on earth can hinge on the slightest missed protocol, an unexpected miscue or even a bit of saliva left on a fork.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.WASHINGTON—The U.S. has burned through so many munitions in Iran that some administration officials increasingly assess that America couldn’t fully execute contingency plans to defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion if it occurred in the near term, U.S. officials said.The U.S.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.If the Iran War has taught us nothing else, it’s that weaponizing shipping routes is now the military move du jour. That has rightly turned attention to the Taiwan Strait, but in this era of intense US-China rivalry, the Strait of Malacca is just as important.The shipping route—which carries roughly 40% of global trade and around 80% of China’s imported oil—has long been regarded as vulnerable to disruption. Southeast Asia’s divisions will make any crisis much harder to contain.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Mumbai: Last week’s euphoria on Dalal Street appears to have cooled, even as global indices outperformed Indian benchmarks. While optimism around US–Iran peace talks lent support, investor activity remained selective, driven more by stock- and sector-specific bets than broad-based momentum.The Nifty 50 and Sensex rose over 1% this week, extending gains after last week’s near 6% surge—their strongest in over five years—but the pace has now moderated.

Since US President Donald Trump started hiking tariffs last year, many commentators have called attention to Asian exporters’ resilience. But the narrowly concentrated gains in Taiwan, Vietnam and Thailand have been driven primarily by electronics, obscuring the sharp divisions that a protectionist US and an export-reliant China are perpetuating across the region. Beyond electronics exports, other sectors are being undercut, leading several governments to announce targeted support measures for firms and consumers, even as headline growth has headed higher.

For at least a decade, developing countries across Asia and Africa have worried about growing dependent on the People’s Republic of China. They’re concerned about debt traps, coercive policies and hidden costs that might push their economies toward crisis.Crisis has come, and that logic has been turned on its head. After six weeks of the US and Israel’s war on Iran and its ensuing counter-attacks, it is the countries that bet on Chinese supply chains that are faring better than the ones that had trusted Pax Americana.

Even though the Strait of Hormuz is just about 33km wide at its narrowest point, about 20 million barrels of crude oil and refinery products would pass through it every day before the war in West Asia. This was roughly a quarter of all seaborne oil trade. Since late February, tanker traffic through the strait has fallen sharply, driving up the price of Brent crude and triggering an oil shock.

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Indian equity valuations have eased sharply down to the levels of peer regional markets, offering investors some comfort after a prolonged phase of elevated multiples.The Nifty 50 is now trading at 19.4 times on a trailing 12-month (TTM) earnings basis, slipping below its five-year median of 22.6x and 10-year median of 22.3x—marking a marked shift down from recent peaks.The headline index has slipped below the 20x price to earnings, or PE, mark for the first time since the Covid-led market disruption in 2020. At these levels, it is placed at a discount to markets in Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea, a Mint analysis based on data from Bloomberg showed.The moderation follows a nearly 12% correction in the Nifty 50 from its 52-week high of 26,328.55 touched on 02 January 2026, driven by the West Asia war, sustained foreign outflows, and softer earnings momentum.While the pullback has brought valuations below to historical averages, it also raises a key question: are Indian equities attractive enough to lure foreign investors back?Foreign portfolio investors, or FPIs, have pulled out about ₹1.25 trillion from Indian equities in 2026, driven by global risk-off sentiment, earnings and growth concerns and sector-specific pressures.“With the Nifty now around 19x PE, valuations have come off meaningfully and look more reasonable versus history,” said Ravi Singh, chief research officer at Master Capital Services.Still, he said, it may be premature to call it a bottom.