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HK recovers, closes higher
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April 29, 1999: 5:00 a.m. ET
Hong Kong stocks stage late-session rally; Tokyo closed for holiday
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LONDON (CNNfn) - Hong Kong staged an afternoon rally to end Thursday's session in the black, but other Asian markets were left in the minus column as investors ignored another record by the Dow Jones industrial average.
Tokyo was closed for a public holiday, the first in a string of national holidays over the coming week.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng closed 46 points higher at 13,179.70, a rise of 0.35 percent, after investors went bargain hunting in the afternoon. This followed a morning session during which the index spent most of its time below the 13,000 mark.
South Korea's Kospi, which closed before afternoon trading in Hong Kong got underway, plunged over 4.7 percent to 752.61, a fall of 37 points. Singapore's Straits Times index recovered some lost ground late on, but was still down 31 points at 1,806.02, a fall of 1.7 percent.
Hong Kong Telecom, the main tech pick in past sessions, followed the market back up, to close almost 1.5 percent higher at HK$20.70. The decline on the Nasdaq in New York Wednesday had initially taken buying impetus out of Hong Kong, which has enjoyed some support from Internet stock fever recently.
China Telecom pushed higher to end up 2.35 percent at HK$17.40. The company reported a 1998 net profit of 6.9 billion yuan ($833 million) and said it was looking to buy telecom assets in China, Reuters reported.
Analysts said the market recovered from futures-related selling in the morning. "There's a bit of bargain-hunting. The market is recovering its lost ground from the morning, which was dominated by futures activities," Antony Mak, Sales director at Vickers Ballas Securities told Reuters.
Seoul's sell-off was largely driven by rumors that the government was intervening in the market to take some of the heat out of its recent rise. The government denied such a move, Reuters reported.
In Australia, the All Ordinaries index closed down 18 points at 3,104.9, a drop of 0.57 percent, as bank and growth stocks were hit amid falling expectations of an interest rate cut. This followed a sell-off in bonds after a higher than expected inflation rate surprised the market.
In Taiwan, the Weighted index dived almost 207 points to 7,289.62, a fall of 2.76 percent, while the Composite index in Manila dropped 27 points, or just over 1 percent, to 2,433.49.
Jakarta was strongly higher, up 2.6 percent at 493.754, while in Thailand and Malaysia blue chips also found some support. The Set index in Bangkok was up less than 1 point at 424.02, while Kuala Lumpur's leading shares added 3.5 points to 665.17.
-- from staff and wire reports
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