Taiwan Stocks Swing After Higher Open, Barely Close in the Green
The Taipei stock market opened higher and fluctuated on the 27th, closing up 54.8 points at 46096.23 points, with turnover of NT$9765.47 hundred million. After the holiday, the market showed a high-open, low-close washout pattern, with the OTC index and Taiex futures turning negative and fluctuating, leaving many investors worried and uneasy about the outlook. Guo Zherong, chief investment officer at Moore Investment Advisory, said the volatility was mainly not due to deteriorating fundamentals, but to funding-cost pressure triggered by geopolitics, stressing that the fourth quarter is the season with the highest win rate for bulls in the year and investors should not stay empty-handed.
Geopolitical Tensions Push Up Oil Prices, Funding Costs Under Pressure
Guo Zherong analyzes that the tense Middle East situation and the Russia-Ukraine war have sharply increased crude oil transportation costs, continuing to push up global inflation and rate-hike expectations. In a high-interest-rate environment, borrowing costs have climbed sharply, putting extreme funding pressure on highly leveraged, high-debt cloud and AI companies reliant on leased servers, thereby dragging down overall U.S. and Taiwan stock performance. Market wariness over receding liquidity has become the main suppressive force behind the high-open, low-close market.
EVA Air Returns to Russian Airspace, Industry Takes Cautious View
Guo Zherong noted that EVA Air recently returned to the Arctic Circle great-circle route, formally resuming overflights of Russian airspace. He believes this route shift reflects a substantive breakthrough in high-level U.S.-Russia talks, and expects that if Middle East and Russia-Ukraine tensions ease, cooling crude-oil freight rates will trigger receding inflation, with global funds expected to flow back into equities. However, airline operators remain low-key, with industry players and scholars viewing this as a single-point test or flexible scheduling for the winter timetable, and whether it represents a full, normalized resumption still depends on geopolitical and air-rights coordination results.
Focus on Low-Base Groups, Don't Miss Out in Q4
Facing short-term volatility, Guo Zherong advises focusing on low-base groups. Old AI names including Quanta, Wistron, and Hon Hai currently have low P/E ratios, some only around 8x, with attractive valuations. Low-base old electronics stocks such as MSI have barely moved in recent years, offering catch-up opportunities. The recent pullback in IC design leader MediaTek is seen as a buying opportunity, with memory play Winbond, and silicon wafers GlobalWafers and Formosa Sumco Technology, all upstream semiconductor targets at relatively low levels. Those not skilled at stock picking can use regular fixed-amount investments or staged deployment in market-cap ETFs such as Yuanta Taiwan Top 50 ETF to avoid staying empty-handed in the fourth-quarter rally.