US rebound boosts TAIEX
The TAIEX closed up 0.81 percent yesterday after Wall Street staged a technical rebound overnight amid optimism on corporate earnings, dealers said.
The weighted index rose 62.20 points to 7,712.03, after moving between 7,638.49 and 7,730.88, on turnover of NT$92.17 billion (US$2.87 billion).
The market opened up 0.38 percent on Wall Street’s gains, and the momentum continued to the end of the trading session with buying focusing on select large cap high-tech and old economy stocks to send the index past the 7,700 point mark, dealers said.
“With a lack of incentives to lead the market, rotational buying has turned active,” MasterLink Securities Corp (元富證券) analyst Tom Tang said.
Tang said buying rotated back to the high-tech sector yesterday, boosting large cap stocks, such as flat panel firms that had been hard hit by concerns over global demand.
“As buying will shift very fast, it is hard for the broader market to have a mainstream sector to help the index move out of its current consolidation mode,” Tang said.
Employers value skills
More than half of job seekers have found that practical skills gave them a better chance of landing a job than a university degree, online job site “yes 123” said yesterday.
A survey conducted by the job site found that 62 percent of respondents felt skills trumped a college degree during a job search, a view that was shared by enterprises.
More than four-fifths (81.9 percent) of companies that responded to the survey said they offer higher wages to individuals with specialized skills, and 45 percent said those with such skills were likely to earn promotions more quickly than other employees.
The survey results show that degrees are no longer the sole factor in determining a jobseeker’s prospects, the job site said.
The trend seems to be reflected in the educational choices teenagers are making, the job site said, citing Ministry of Education statistics showing that there were more teens studying at vocational high school than regular high schools last year compared to 2005.
E Ink boss forecasts big growth
E Ink Holdings Inc (元太科技) gained the most in almost two months in Taipei trading after the Economic News Daily cited company chairman Scott Liu (劉思誠) as saying the firm would ship an estimated 20 million electronic books next year.
Liu said the firm would likely see a 40 percent to 50 percent growth in sales for the second half of this year, compared to the first half, the report said.
Prices of six-inch electronic readers would likely drop by US$50, to range between US$100 and US$150 each, the report said.
The stock rose by NT$2.8 to close NT$43.20 per share.
Lending curbs not hurting
The central bank said in a faxed statement that its lending curbs on home loans aren’t causing difficulties in repaying mortgages for property investors, the Chinese-language Commercial Times reported yesterday.
The central bank told lenders last month to cap home loans for buyers who already have mortgages in the Taipei metropolitan area at 70 percent of value of a property and cancel grace periods on principal repayments.
NT dollar unchanged
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday remained unchanged to close at NT$32.155 against its US counterpart on turnover of US$599 million.
The US dollar opened at NT$32.155 and moved between NT$32.075 and NT$32.184 before the close.
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