Taiwan Stock Market Poised To Open In The Green

(RTTNews) - The Taiwan stock market on Friday snapped the two-day slide in which it had slumped more than 280 points or 1.2 percent. The Taiwan Stock Exchanged now rests just shy of the 22,160-point plateau and it may pick up steam on Monday.

The global forecast for the Asian markets is positive on optimism over the outlook for interest rates. The European and U.S. markets were up and the Asian bourses figure to open in similar fashion.

The TSE finished slightly higher on Friday following mixed performances from the financial shares and the technology stocks.

For the day, the index perked 9.25 points or 0.04 percent to finish at 22,158.05 after trading between 21,935.98 and 22,159.27.

Among the actives, Cathay Financial was up 0.16 percent, while Mega Financial perked 0.13 percent, CTBC Financial skidded 1.05 percent, First Financial sank 0.55 percent, Fubon Financial collected 1.02 percent, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company dipped 0.21 percent, United Microelectronics Corporation shed 0.54 percent, Hon Hai Precision rose 0.28 percent, Largan Precision jumped 1.67 percent, Catcher Technology climbed 1.07 percent, MediaTek lost 0.41 percent, Novatek Microelectronics lost 0.36 percent, Formosa Plastics dropped 0.76 percent, Nan Ya Plastics tumbled 1.61 percent, Asia Cement added 0.33 percent and Delta Electronics, E Sun Financial and Universal Cement were unchanged.

The lead from Wall Street is upbeat as the major averages opened higher on Friday and spent the whole day in the green, ending near session highs.

The Dow jumped 462.28 points or 1.14 percent to finish at 41,175.08, while the NASDAQ rallied 258.39 points or 1.47 percent to end at 17,877.79 and the S&P 500 advanced 63.97 points or 1.15 percent to close at 5,634.61.

For the week, the Dow shot up 1.3 percent, the NASDAQ jumped 1.4 percent and the S&P 500 spiked 1.5 percent.

The rebound on Wall Street came as highly anticipated remarks by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell indicated the central bank is prepared to begin lowering interest rates at its next monetary policy meeting in September.

In other U.S. economic news, the Commerce Department noted a substantial increase by new home sales in the U.S. in July.

Following the rebound in the previous session, the price of crude oil showed another strong move to the upside on Friday. West Texas Intermediate crude for October delivery surged $1.82 or 2.5 percent to $74.83 a barrel after jumping $1.08 or 1.5 percent to $73.01 a barrel during Thursday's session. But the price of crude oil fell by 0.9 for the week due to sell-off earlier in the week.