SINGAPORE shares advanced at the opening bell on Thursday (May 2) morning, with local banks leading gains despite subdued performance in global markets. 

As at 9.01 am, the Straits Times Index (STI) rose 14.91 points or 0.5 per cent to 3,307.6. Across the broader market, losers outnumbered gainers 74 to 49 after 68.7 million securities worth S$106.2 million changed hands.

Seatrium : S51 0% was the most heavily traded counter by volume. The counter was down 1 per cent or S$0.001 at S$0.097, after 31.9 million securities were transacted. 

Other counters that were briskly traded included Meta Health : 5DX 0% which dropped 10 per cent or S$0.001 to S$0.009, after 2.5 million shares changed hands, and Thai Beverage : Y92 0% which declined 1 per cent or S$0.005 to S$0.49, after 1.9 million securities were traded.

Banking stocks were in the black during early trade. DBS : D05 0% gained 2.5 per cent or S$0.86 to S$35.76, OCBC : O39 0% climbed 0.9 per cent or S$0.13 to S$14.38, and UOB : U11 0% inched up 0.8 per cent or S$0.25 to S$30.65. Before the market opened, DBS reported that net profit for the first quarter ended March 2024 rose 15 per cent year on year to S$2.95 billion, beating the S$2.5 billion consensus forecast in a Bloomberg survey of five analysts. The lender said net profit would have been S$2.96 billion excluding exceptional items which included integration costs for Citibank Taiwan.

Over on Wall Street, stocks ended a bumpy session largely lower on Wednesday. Major equities were initially boosted, after Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell continued to hold interest rates steady and said further rate hikes were unlikely, but those gains largely diminished in late trading. 

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The tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index shed 0.3 per cent to 15,605.48, and the broad-based S&P 500 declined 0.3 per cent to 5,018.39. The Dow Jones Industrial Average eked out a gain of 0.2 per cent to 37,903.29.

In Europe, the pan-European Stoxx 600 retreated on Tuesday, pulled down by lower-than-expected earnings from the region’s top carmakers. The Stoxx 600 closed 0.8 per cent lower at 504.31.