Taiwan's Saturday news is a mix of politics and markets, with a busy local election season ahead and a mostly upbeat tone for stocks.

• Registration closed for the nine-in-one local elections, with 81 candidates in the race and both main parties, the DPP and KMT, each putting up 19 people for local leader seats.
• The DPP is going after New Taipei while the KMT is fighting for Kaohsiung, setting up the two big battlegrounds.
• Taiwan's stock market looks strong, with money coming in from foreign and local big investors and a batch of stocks tipped to pull the wider market up.
• President Lai wants Taiwan to become an asset management hub for Asia, a push to draw more money into the island.
• The Taichung power plant is moving off coal, with two coal units set to be torn down first and the site handed back in 2029, part of a plan to go coal-free by 2034.

Outlook: Expect campaigning to dominate the political news for months, while investor money keeps flowing into Taiwanese stocks in the near term.