China's 7% crash sparks selling in S'pore

AFTER the Straits Times Index (STI) dropped 14.3 per cent in 2015 amid ever-weakening liquidity, there were hopes - albeit faint - that 2016 might see the market enjoy an upturn in fortunes, even if almost all brokers and investment banks had issued negative outlooks for stocks.

No such luck. If traders here are to encounter better days ahead they will have to wait a while longer - on the first trading day of the new year on Monday, the STI plunged 46.76 points or 1.6 per cent to 2,835.97.

This was in tandem with a 2.7 per cent loss in the Hang Seng Index, a 3.1 per cent fall in Japan's Nikkei 225 and, most relevantly, a 7 per cent collapse in the Shanghai Composite Index.