Baht and SET gain
The baht continued its month-long rally against the US dollar yesterday,
reaching a near six-month at 44 to the greenbacks.
Dealers said the baht,
which ended trade at 44.04 / 07 to the dollar,
had been gaining ground all week,
following most regional currencies gains against the dollar.
On the Thursday, the baht closed at 44.27 / 32 to the dollar.
Gains were led mostly in the offshore market,
with traders saying domestic transactions yesterday were light.
“The gains came as people dumped dollar to buy baht in the Singapore,
Hong Kong and London markets, one dealer said .
“It is been pretty much are gain-wide rally.
Analysts said that with Thai fundamentals largely unchanged,
the gain by the bath were more likely to come from dollar weakness,
spurred by recent selling on Wall Street the fact of pessimistic data on the US economy.
While some demand for the baht has come from foreigners buying Thai shares in the past week,
analysts said volume has been only a minor factor being the bath’s steady gain against the dollar since late July.
Given little sign of pickup in the Thai economy,
few dealers expect the baht to sustain gains through the 43 level next week.
The share prices yesterday rose by 1.19% despite gloomy data from the central bank showing at a 14.2% year-on-year fall in export value for July.
The Set index closed yesterday at 335.57 points,
up 3.95, in turnover worth 8.75 billion baht Bank shares rose 1.7% and finance was up 0.72%.
Foreign investors were net sellers yesterday, buying securities for 1.27 billion baht and selling 1.3 billion, while retail investor bought shares totaling 7.09 billion and sold 7.19 billion.