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Wall Street's gains and foreign funds boost main bourse

The stock market ended higher yesterday on Wall Street's overnight gains and continued inflows of foreign funds into technology heavyweights, analysts said.

The TAIEX closed up 52.13 points, or 0.9 percent, at 5,991.55 in dealings valued at NT$72.97 billion (US$2.32 billion), up from NT$52.25 billion on Thursday.

"Market sentiment improved a lot Friday, and you can see turnover grew quite a bit from just NT$40 billion to NT$50 billion in previous sessions," said Jose Lee, an analyst at First Taisec Securities.

Overnight, the Dow Jones industrial average rose 0.76 percent to 10,537.60 and the NASDAQ composite index gained 1.03 percent to 2,071.24 after the US Commerce Department revised first-quarter economic growth to 3.5 percent from an initial estimate of 3.1 percent.

Foreign investors likely remained the market's major buyers ahead of a move by Morgan Stanley Capital International on Tuesday to give Taiwan full weighting in its global indexes, Lee said.

Foreign institutional investors bought a net NT$8.53 billion worth of shares on the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday, compared with NT$4.71 billion on Thursday.

Among the biggest gainers were technology stocks, which rose 1.6 percent overall.

Contract chipmaker United Microelectronics Corp (聯電) remained the main board's most traded stock for the fourth straight session, climbing 1.9 percent to NT$21.40.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) ended 1.4 percent higher at NT$56.80.
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