Tech Shares May Boost Taiwan Stock Market

(RTTNews) - The Taiwan stock market on Monday snapped the two-day slide in which it had slipped more than 60 points or 0.2 percent. The Taiwan Stock Exchange now sits just above the 28,330-point plateau and it may tick higher again on Tuesday.

The global forecast for the Asian markets is murky, with technology stocks expected to provide a slight bump. The European and U.S. markets were mixed and little changed and the Asian bourses figure to follow suit.

The TSE finished modestly higher on Monday following gains from the financial shares, weakness from the plastics and a mixed picture from the technology stocks.

For the day, the index added 101.24 points or 0.36 percent to finish at 28,334.59 after trading between 28,150.45 and 28,494.99.

Among the actives, First Financial shed 0.35 percent, while Fubon Financial collected 0.88 percent, E Sun Financial climbed 1.34 percent, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company gained 0.67 percent, United Microelectronics Corporation soared 2.59 percent, Hon Hai Precision tumbled 2.33 percent, Largan Precision rallied 1.35 percent, Catcher Technology dropped 1.01 percent, MediaTek sank 0.76 percent, Delta Electronics slumped 1.21 percent, Novatek Microelectronics rose 0.25 percent, Formosa Plastics skidded 1.05 percent, Nan Ya Plastics fell 0.36 percent, Asia Cement stumbled 2.34 percent and Cathay Financial, Mega Financial and CTBC Financial were unchanged.

The Dow dropped 226.19 points or 0.48 percent to finish at 47,336.68, while the NASDAQ climbed 109.77 points or 0.46 percent to close at 23,834.72 and the S&P 500 rose 11.77 points or 0.17 percent to end at 6,851.97.

The gain by the tech-heavy NASDAQ reflected a sharp increase by shares of Amazon (AMZN) after it announced a $38 billion agreement with OpenAI. Market leader Nvidia (NVDA) also rallied after software giant Microsoft (MSFT) revealed it has secured export licenses to ship Nvidia chips to the United Arab Emirates.

On the other hand, shares of Merck (MRK) weighed on the Dow, as did Nike (NKE), 3M (MMM) and Chevron (CVX).

In U.S. economic news, the Institute for Supply Management said manufacturing activity unexpectedly contracted at a slightly faster rate in October.

Crude oil prices edged slightly higher on Monday after OPEC agreed to halt production hikes for the first quarter of 2026. West Texas Intermediate crude for December delivery was up $0.07 or 0.11 percent at $61.05 per barrel.