The TAIEX rose for the third straight day yesterday to break the 5,000-point mark, while the New Taiwan dollar climbed for the fifth day to a one-month high on hopes that Chinese tourists would boost consumption and that the worst of the global financial storm was over.
The benchmark index rose 70.07 points, or 1.41 percent, to 5,041.39 — its strongest showing since Oct. 16, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed.
Turnover was NT$107.39 billion (US$3.13 billion), with foreign funds buying a net NT$3.568 billion in local shares.
Alan Tseng (曾炎裕), an analyst at Capital Securities Corp (群益證券), said institutional investors at home and abroad had increased their holdings of local equities in recent days because Wall Street seemed to have stabilized.
“The worst of the global financial crisis is over,” Tseng said by telephone.
“Investors regained [their] risk appetite as the plunge in US financial stocks eased off — a sentiment that also buoyed the local bourse,” he said.
The financial subindex closed up 2.72 percent on the back of a 7.29 percent gain in its US counterpart, even though the Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 7.01 points.
Tseng said the arrival of a large group of Chinese tourists on Monday had also contributed to the rally, with shares of many tourism companies performing well yesterday.
But profit-taking pulled the subindex down 0.69 percent, Tseng said.
The optimism spread to the foreign exchange market, where the NT dollar rose NT$0.138, or 0.37 percent, to NT$34.278 against the greenback.
Turnover was US$1.244 billion on the Taipei Forex and US$412 million on the smaller Cosmos Foreign Exchange, bringing total transactions to US$1.656 billion, statistics from the two companies showed.
A dealer at a domestic bank said he was concerned about the rising value of the NT dollar because the economic outlook remained gloomy.
“The NT dollar’s appreciation had more to do with speculation than investors regaining their confidence,” the dealer said on condition of anonymity. “They will pull out of the market once they meet their profit goal.”
But the dealer said it was likely that the central bank would intervene and spoil speculators’ plans.
A Chinese freighter that allegedly snapped an undersea cable linking Taiwan proper to Penghu County is suspected of being owned by a Chinese state-run company and had docked at the ports of Kaohsiung and Keelung for three months using different names. On Tuesday last week, the Togo-flagged freighter Hong Tai 58 (宏泰58號) and its Chinese crew were detained after the Taipei-Penghu No. 3 submarine cable was severed. When the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) first attempted to detain the ship on grounds of possible sabotage, its crew said the ship’s name was Hong Tai 168, although the Automatic Identification System (AIS)
An Akizuki-class destroyer last month made the first-ever solo transit of a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ship through the Taiwan Strait, Japanese government officials with knowledge of the matter said yesterday. The JS Akizuki carried out a north-to-south transit through the Taiwan Strait on Feb. 5 as it sailed to the South China Sea to participate in a joint exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces that day. The Japanese destroyer JS Sazanami in September last year made the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s first-ever transit through the Taiwan Strait, but it was joined by vessels from New Zealand and Australia,
CHANGE OF MIND: The Chinese crew at first showed a willingness to cooperate, but later regretted that when the ship arrived at the port and refused to enter Togolese Republic-registered Chinese freighter Hong Tai (宏泰號) and its crew have been detained on suspicion of deliberately damaging a submarine cable connecting Taiwan proper and Penghu County, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement yesterday. The case would be subject to a “national security-level investigation” by the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office, it added. The administration said that it had been monitoring the ship since 7:10pm on Saturday when it appeared to be loitering in waters about 6 nautical miles (11km) northwest of Tainan’s Chiang Chun Fishing Port, adding that the ship’s location was about 0.5 nautical miles north of the No.
SECURITY: The purpose for giving Hong Kong and Macau residents more lenient paths to permanent residency no longer applies due to China’s policies, a source said The government is considering removing an optional path to citizenship for residents from Hong Kong and Macau, and lengthening the terms for permanent residence eligibility, a source said yesterday. In a bid to prevent the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from infiltrating Taiwan through immigration from Hong Kong and Macau, the government could amend immigration laws for residents of the territories who currently receive preferential treatment, an official familiar with the matter speaking on condition of anonymity said. The move was part of “national security-related legislative reform,” they added. Under the amendments, arrivals from the Chinese territories would have to reside in Taiwan for
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