The winning streak has stretched to three sessions now for the Hong Kong stock market, which has advanced almost 850 points or 3.7 percent in that span. The Hang Seng Index finished just above the 23,400-point plateau, and now the market is looking at continued strength on Tuesday.
The global forecast for the Asian markets suggests further upside on optimism as monetary policy is expected to remain accommodative around the world for the near term - although several of the regional bourses have seen heavy gains in recent days and are ripe for profit taking. The European and U.S. markets finished higher, and the Asian markets are expected to at least open in similar fashion.
The Hang Seng finished sharply higher again on Monday following gains among the energy producers, financial shares and properties - although the casinos weighed.
For the day, the index jumped 291.94 points or 1.26 percent to finish at 23,408.57 after trading between 23,264.05 and 23, 478.90 on turnover of 100.98 billion Hong Kong dollars.
Among the actives, HSBC added 0.95 percent, while Ping An Insurance collected 3.49 percent, China Life jumped 1.80 percent, Henderson Land jumped 1.16 percent, Sun Hung Kai Properties advanced 2.21 percent, Galaxy Entertainment tumbled 2.19 percent, Kunlun Energy spiked 3.97 percent, China Petroleum and Chemical (Sinopec) soared 3.45 percent and PetroChina surged 4.06 percent.
The lead from Wall Street is positive as stocks moved mostly higher on Monday, extending gains from the three previous sessions as the Dow and the S&P 500 hit new record closing highs.
The Dow jumped 154.64 points or 0.9 percent to 17,959.44, while the NASDAQ rose 16.04 points or 0.3 percent to 4,781.42 and the S&P 500 climbed 7.89 points or 0.4 percent to 2,078.54.
The strength partly reflected the continuing upward momentum triggered by the Federal Reserve's monetary policy statement last week.
Optimism about the outlook for the U.S. economy may also have generated some buying interest ahead of the release of a slew of data later today - including reports on durable goods orders, personal income and spending and new home sales.
Meanwhile, traders largely shrugged off a report from the National Association of Realtors showing that existing home sales pulled back by more than expected in November, touching a six-month low.
Later today, Hong Kong will see November figures for consumer prices; the inflation rate was 5.2 percent in October.
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