STI manages 7pt rebound in low volume

HAVING dropped 38 points last week, the Straits Times Index managed a 7.02-point rebound to 3,307.70 on Monday.

It was also the first day that investors could trade in lots of 100 shares instead of 1,000 units, although on this front there was not much of a noticeable impact on liquidity - volume was 1.2 billion units worth S$897.2 million compared with the average of S$1.13 billion last week. However, this could have been because Wall Street was closed on Monday for Martin Luther King Jr Day.

Weak oil prices and the continued turmoil in the currency markets after the shock move by the Swiss central bank to remove its cap on the franc-euro exchange rate were cited as the two main worries afflicting markets n…