Taiwan stocks jumped 2 percent on Thursday as bargain hunters actively entered the market when the index hit a 1-year intraday low, looking for cheap valuations in major technology issues and helping to lift overall sentiment.
Chi Mei Optoelectronics, Taiwan's second-largest display screen maker, jumped the daily 7 percent maximum and was one of the most actively traded issues as the firm posted quarterly earnings that jumped 12-fold to a record T$9.0 billion.
The TAIEX share index gained 100.74 points, or 2.08 percent, to close at 5,427.61 after sliding over 1 percent earlier in the session.
Analysts said the market's recent resilience in the face of doubts over corporate profits in the third quarter and high oil prices gave investors enough confidence to step back into the battered electronics sector.
"We have weathered a lot of bad news in the past two weeks," said Maggie Chien, asset management consultant at Capital Investment Management.
"The market has shown that there is not much more downside, and electronics shares are starting to pull higher with some real volume," she said.
Turnover improved to T$73.3 billion in the see-saw session, up sharply from the last session's T$39.67 billion, which had probed a 14-month low.
Gains in Chi Mei helped world number three display screen maker and rival AU Optronics add 5.64 percent. Even the battered memory chip sector, which has been hurt by weakening prices, managed to show gains.
Powerchip Semiconductor, Taiwan's largest maker of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips, rose 4.27 percent to T$22.0, bouncing off intraday losses of up to 4.7 percent.
The tech sector gains also helped banking shares, which had been relatively stable in the past weeks. Chinatrust Financial Holdings Co, the owners of Taiwan's largest private bank, added 0.59 percent.
The over-the-counter market's TAISDAQ index rose 2.3 percent to finish at 109.23, while August TAIEX futures advanced 2.76 percent, to 5,399.
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