Taiwanese shares close up
Taiwanese share prices closed up 0.79 percent yesterday as rotational buying helped the market vault past the 7,000-point mark, dealers said.
The weighted index rose 55.15 points to 7,028.43 on turnover of NT$112.35 billion (US$3.43 billion).
The market opened up 0.50 percent after Wall Street extended gains on Friday by reversing early losses, dealers said.
While profit taking emerged during the trade, interest rotated to financial heavyweights and large cap high tech stocks to maintain momentum, they said.
“Wall Street’s resilient performance triggered buying here despite some disappointing US corporate earnings reports,” Mega Securities (兆豐證券) analyst Alex Huang (黃國偉) said. “The local bourse is expected to continue to reflect movements of its US counterparts with a close eye on global economic fundamentals.”
The financial sector led the upside as a market laggard, dealers said.
Bellwether electronic stocks were boosted by hopes that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) and United Microelectronic Corp (聯電) would give positive guidance on the industrial outlook in their investor conferences later this week, dealers said.
“Large cap electronic firms may see further upside over the next few sessions on relatively cheap valuations,” Huang said.
However, for the broader market as a whole, Huang said, there was limited room for gains as the market breached the 7,000-point level.
Lite-On rises to one-year high
Lite-On Technology Corp (光寶科技), the world’s biggest maker of power supplies for notebook computers, rose to a one-year high in Taipei trading on a United Daily News report of a higher second-quarter profit.
The company climbed 1.5 percent to NT$33.25 as of 12:30pm, the highest since June 11 last year before closing at NT$33.20 per share.
Second-quarter profit will be “several times better” than in the three months ended on March 31, the Taipei-based Chinese-language daily said, attributing the information to chairman Raymond Soong (宋恭源).
Powerchip shares surge
Powerchip Semiconductor Corp (力晶), Taiwan’s biggest maker of computer memory chips, surged by its daily limit after securing a one-year loan from Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc (日月光).
Powerchip climbed 6.9 percent to close at NT$3.10, the highest since June 25.
Advanced Semiconductor’s board agreed to lend Powerchip Semiconductor NT$450 million (US$13.7 million) over one year, the Hsinchu-based firm said in an exchange filing on Friday.
Powerchip will use Rexchip Electronics Corp’s (瑞晶) stock as collateral, the statement said. Rexchip is a venture between Powerchip and Japan’s Elpida Memory Inc.
Local currency advances
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday rose 0.4 percent, rebounding after suspected intervention by the central bank.
The NT dollar rose by NT$0.135 to NT$32.82 versus the greenback yesterday on turnover of US$792 million.
The currency dropped 0.5 percent in the final minute of trading on Friday, a slide traders attributed to central bank intervention.
“The currency will gradually appreciate given that the Taiwan economy has bottomed out,” said Thomas Harr, a Singapore-based currency strategist at Standard Chartered PLC. “Its relationship with China has also improved, which is an important sentiment indicator for Taiwan.”
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