Taiwan's stock market opened with a bang yesterday, in a rally that saw the benchmark index gain 340 points, or 4 per cent, to close at 8,865 points.
'Rise, rise, rise; long live Ma Ying-jeou,' investors shouted at a securities house as they watched a wall of monitors flashing red, which signifies rising prices in Taiwan, instead of green, which represents falls.
Some investors said they had been waiting for this day for some time. 'The faster the Democratic Progressive Party government goes, the better,' one investor said.
He said the index had been looking green ever since the pro-independence DPP - with which Beijing refused to deal - won the presidential elections in 2000 and again in 2004.
Mr Ma, of the Kuomintang, swept to a landslide victory in Saturday's presidential election, taking more than 7.6 million ballots to become the first directly elected president to gain so many votes. His DPP opponent, Frank Hsieh Chang-ting, took 5.4 million votes.
Improving cross-strait ties and liberalising economic links were the major platform issues of Mr Ma's campaign, and shares of all companies with mainland investments rocketed, as did those of firms likely to benefit from warmer ties.