In the short term, there is uncertainty regarding share placements. Since August 31, fund-raising activities by various companies have raised about HK$22 billion from the market, so that is an overhang.

If the job data is stronger than expected, people will expect a longer rising trend in interest rate.

There's concern about oversupply and price competition. Price competition has been very keen.

It's unclear when the Fed will stop raising interest rates. Even if the rate hike comes to an end, Hong Kong's stock market may not rebound immediately.

The rise could also be attributed to some year-end window dressing activities as port related stocks has performed relatively poor earlier.

There were no nice or nasty surprises in the budget so market reaction was quite muted.

That's quite good for 2005, after the central administration implemented measures to cool down the economy.

I think the market's come to realize that economic growth in the U.S. is not threatened by higher oil and commodity prices. Regional markets also benefited from positive fund flows.

The strong sentiment of the US and Japan markets helped push up the index. The rally is very broad based.