Taiwan stocks closed 0.68 percent higher on Thursday, with financial shares and some technology players such as mobile phone casing maker Catcher leading a rebound after gains on Wall Street. The main TAIEX share index ended up 63.46 points at 9,354.41, following a 1 percent drop on Wednesday that pulled the market away from a seven-year high.
Turnover was active at T$233.04 billion ($7.1 billion), from T$220.24 billion the previous day. "Wall Street gains helped domestic shares but some blue chips were seeing pressure so funds moved to banking shares and specific tech stocks," said Cliff Change, manager at Mega International Securities.
The electronics sub-index edged down 0.28 percent while the bank and insurance index advanced 2.87 percent. Shares of Taiwan's top financial holding firm, Cathy, rose 3.47 percent after Citicorp raised its target price on the firm. Shin Kong Financial gained 5.5 percent. Shares in the United States, Taiwan's No 2 export market, rose as fewer profit warnings fuelled optimism over the corporate reporting season.
Catcher Technology advanced 4.18 percent to T$349.00 and was the second most active stock on the market. This week, Catcher, which provides mobile phone casings to firms like Apple Inc Rose after a report by J.P. Morgan said there could be a new Nanto phone in the works. But other analysts have disagreed with the report.
Kevin Yeh, vice president of Grand Cathy Securities, said he sees the index hitting 9,400 points this week. Yeh added that DRAM (dynamic random access memory) stocks would be a favourable short to long term investment as demand had begun to improve in the sector. Credit Susses has upgraded its ratings and target prices on three Taiwan DRAM makers. Powerchip Semiconductor rose 1.18 percent, promos Technologies Inc gained 1.06 percent and Inter Memories Inc rose 0.81 percent.
Comments
Comments are closed.