(Bloomberg) — Taiwanese stocks rose to a new record as investors returned to the pre-Iran war trading theme of chasing AI shares amid hopes for easing tensions in the Middle East.
The Taiex Index advanced as much as 1.9% in early Tuesday trading, surpassing its previous intraday record on Feb. 26. The benchmark has gained about 25% this year, outpacing the MSCI Asia Pacific Index’s 9.7% increase.
The latest gains helped the island’s stock gauge erase all its losses since the war started at the end of February, when global AI stocks were battered due to concerns about soaring energy costs and supply disruptions. Also brightening investor mood was a series of policy incentives recently announced by Beijing for Taiwan following a landmark meeting between President Xi Jinping and the island’s opposition leader, Cheng Li-wun.
Shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the sole chipmaker for Nvidia Corp.’s advanced AI accelerators and Apple Inc.’s iPhone processors, jumped as much as 1.8%. The company reported a 35% increase in quarterly revenue last week, suggesting global AI chip demand remained intact during the first weeks of the Iran war. It is scheduled to report full first-quarter earnings on April 16.
“With the rapid growth trajectories we are seeing from Anthropic, OpenAI and other leading AI developers, many of those doubts have faded,” said Vikas Pershad, an Asian equities portfolio manager at M&G Investments. “Key bottlenecks have tightened meaningfully, and many of the most critical points in the value chain continue to sit in Taiwan.”
The Iran war did not impact analyst sentiment toward Taiwan and South Korea as their tech stocks continued to see strong assessment upgrades, thanks to a strong earnings cycle and a return to momentum chasing, according to Sanford C. Bernstein.
(Updates with analyst comments and TSMC earnings details)
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