Late push puts STI into the black

THE Straits Times Index (STI) kicked off the week by spending the entire session in the red before a push in the final seconds took it to a nett 1.03-point gain at 3,403.89.

Sentiment here was largely unaffected by an interest-rate cut in China that pushed the Hang Seng and China indices higher. Instead, the STI appeared to run either on its own steam or on expectations of how Wall Street might perform in the session ahead and was dragged into the red by falls in DBS and OCBC.

Turnover was in line with recent daily totals at 1.36 billion units worth S$1.29 billion for an average uni…