Taiwan Stock Exchange tumbles after chip exuberance and renewed Covid fears

The Taiwan Stock Exchange suffered a brutal sell-off as worries about global inflation, speculation on semiconductor firms, and fears about rising local Covid-19 cases.

Taiwan Stock Exchange
Taiwanese stocks plunged last week
(Image credit: © SAM YEH/AFP via Getty Images)

“There are bad market days, then there is the 8%-plus free fall that gripped Taiwan stocks”, says Barbara Kollmeyer in Barron’s. Taiwanese shares suffered a brutal sell-off on 12 May as worries about global inflation and overheated speculation on semiconductor firms collided with fears about rising local Covid-19 cases. The market later recouped some of its losses, but the early-day plunge was the worst that the tech-heavy Taiex index has suffered since 2000 when the dotcom bubble imploded.

Betting it all on chips

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Markets editor

Alex is an investment writer who has been contributing to MoneyWeek since 2015. He has been the magazine’s markets editor since 2019. 

Alex has a passion for demystifying the often arcane world of finance for a general readership. While financial media tends to focus compulsively on the latest trend, the best opportunities can lie forgotten elsewhere. 

He is especially interested in European equities – where his fluent French helps him to cover the continent’s largest bourse – and emerging markets, where his experience living in Beijing, and conversational Chinese, prove useful. 

Hailing from Leeds, he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford. He also holds a Master of Public Health from the University of Manchester.