In a bid to combat deflation, there was a concerted drive by the Chinese authorities to get people to take their savings and invest in the stock markets.
Yesterday's announcement by the Hong Kong Mortgage Corporation that the government would provide a top-up guarantee on mortgages was good for the market. But we are still a bit cautious. It was very light turnover and there was no real selling pressure.
It's been a bit volatile today. People are selling into strength and buying into weakness.
There is follow-through buying of select H-shares, mainly commodity stocks.
In the long-term, I think there is quite a lot of institutional money that might just want to simply have a yield, a relatively high yield, with perhaps a little bit of growth potential in it.
Scores of investors are of the view that interest rates won't go up much higher.
They won't go mad; they're coming back after being in the doldrums.
It may not be long before we see another interest rate cut and this could account for the follow-through buying we are seeing today.
Overseas money is the primary driver based on a return of a degree of confidence. It is now perceived that most economies have bottomed out and are now on a recovery trend.
Hong Kong took a lead from Wall Street, Tokyo and other overseas markets, and this explains gains this morning.
