Singapore shares open higher on Tuesday in Wall St's footsteps

SINGAPORE share prices opened higher on Tuesday with the Straits Times Index (STI) up 11.13 points or 0.39 per cent to 2,893.40 at 9am.

This followed the Dow and S&P 500 which rallied on Monday, recovering some of the prior session's losses. Gains were minimal on the tech-rich Nasdaq, however, due to weakness among biotech shares.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average shot up 125.61 points (0.77 per cent) to 16,510.19. The broad-based S&P 500 rose 8.94 points (0.46 per cent) to 1,966.97, while the Nasdaq Composite Index edged up 1.73 points (0.04 per cent) to 4,828.95.

In Asia, financial markets in Japan are closed from Monday to Wednesday for a public holiday.

Singapore's STI had, on Monday, finished a marginal 0.1 per cent higher, advancing 2.68 points to 2,882.27 on its first day without two major Jardine group stocks - Jardine Matheson and Jardine Strategic - in nearly two decades. Olam was also removed from the STI basket. All three were replaced instead with SATS, UOL and Yangzijiang.

On Tuesday morning, the Singapore Exchange's biggest gainers in early trading included Jardine Matheson at US$47.20 (up S$0.20 or 0.4 per cent); UOB at S$19.28 (up S$0.12 or 0.6 per cent); and Singapore Airlines at S$10.63 (up S$0.08 or 0.8 per cent).

Some 51.3 million shares worth S$52.5 million changed hands, with gainers numbering losers 88-36.