Getting to the point
One possible reason for these kinds of rallies is that everyone is so pummelled by bad news that almost any good news is greeted with unbridled euphoria.
It's a sign of the times that the biggest news yesterday was that Citigroup, one of the biggest financial companies in the world, reckons it actually managed to post a profit in the first two months of this year.
Of greater relevance as a barometer of the health of the tech industry (and to finally address the headline of this story), Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company announced it was raising its outlook for Q1. "TSMC's first-quarter business is expected to be better than the company's previous guidance given on January 22, 2009," said Lora Ho, VP and CFO of TSMC.
TSMC has recently announced an unexpected partnership with Intel, but that won't have had an effect on the bottom line yet. "Primarily due to quick orders from customers, especially from the mainland Chinese market, and a stronger US dollar, TSMC now expects first-quarter revenue to be between NT$36 billion and NT$38 billion, higher than the previous expectation of between NT$32 billion and NT$35 billion," said Lo.
Again this must be viewed in context. Net sales of NT$11.5 billion for February were still down 7.5 percent on January and nearly 60 percent down on February 2008. But in this most brutal of bear markets (the Dow is still at half of its value in October 2007), we'll take whatever good news we can get.
