TAIPEI: Taiwan stocks ended down 1.09 percent on Monday with investors focusing on eurozone woes after Standard & Poor's sovereign debt rating cuts and looking past President Ma Ying-jeou's re-election that could speed up ties trade with China.
Fund managers had expected a short-term rally after Ma won a second term in a weekend election, but selling pressure emerged in an abbreviated trading week, with the market set to close starting on Thursday for the Lunar New Year.
The TAIEX index fell 77.92 points to 7,103.62, tracking losses in other regional bourses and erasing a 0.84 percent gain at the opening bell.
"The election factor has already been discounted and the market has gone back to the fundamentals, in which the euro zone debt crisis is the most influential factor," said Beyond Asset Management managing director Michael On.
He expected Taiwan shares would continue to ease ahead of the holidays as investors remain cautious, predicting the main share index TAIEX would retreat below 7,000 points in the short term.
Among the worst decliners, the financial sub-index shed 1.87 percent. The electronics sub-index was down 1.14 percent, with TSMC shedding 2.84 percent ahead of fourth-quarter results on Wednesday.
The top gainer was construction on hopes that Ma's re-election will create conditions for a boom in property development.
The Taiwan dollar was down 0.023 percent to trade at T$30.007.
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