Singapore stocks close flat, pennies enjoy hectic churning

THE main feature of Monday's session was hectic churning of penny stocks such as Noble Group, Cedar Strategic, SunMoon and Ezra that propelled unit turnover to 2.2 billion units, estimated to be the highest in three months.

The Straits Times Index, in the meantime, drifted to a five-point loss at 2,870.24 - a disappointing performance that was wholly expected, given the external uncertainties plaguing the market such as volatile oil and the upcoming US presidential election.

Despite the high unit volume, dollar value of business done was a paltry S$631.5 million for an average of just S$0.28 per unit. Excluding warrants, there were 197 rises versus 181 falls.

Noble Group, whose shares had almost doubled over the past few weeks after a research house said the company was about to sell its US subsidiary Noble Americas Energy Solutions (NAES) for US$1 billion, on Monday duly announced the sale of NAES for US$1.05 billion. Its shares ended S$0.006 higher at S$0.198 on volume of 324 million.