Taiwan stocks set a new 20-month closing high on Thursday as a bullish brokerage call on Intel fuelled buying in memory chip issues like ProMOS Tech, which had recently lagged the market.
The TAIEX share index ended up 0.45 percent at 6,169.17 points, also cheered by unexpectedly strong December exports data issued on Wednesday.
The market's rise follows a near six percent rally over the last six sessions that was spurred mostly by financial and raw material shares gaining on a better outlook this year.
Turnover remained active at T$104.96 billion, but falling from T$131.82 billion on Wednesday.
ProMOS shares rose 2.68 percent to T$13.40 after Bernstein Research raised its investment rating on US chip giant Intel to "outperform" from "market perform," pushing the Nasdaq to its highest close in 2-1/2 years on Wednesday.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, the world's largest contract chipmaker, ended flat at T$65.5 minutes before it posted strong December sales that lifted fourth-quarter revenues to an all-time high.
The financial sub-index, second only to techs in weighting, ended up 0.52 percent on Thursday, led by First Financial Holding whose share price rose 0.39 percent to T$25.80.
The over-the-counter TAISDAQ index closed up 1.21 percent at 124.24 on Thursday, while January TAIEX futures gained 0.6 percent to finish at 6,211.