Banks, offshore oil sector main plays in week of sporadic activity

VOLATILITY in the offshore oil sector and continued strong support for the banks provided the main features of interest this week. There was also support for SingTel, a sudden play on the Singapore Exchange (SGX) ) - supposedly because of a "buy" from Goldman Sachs - and continued recovery in Singapore Airlines (SIA), the latter a clear beneficiary of falling oil prices.

The broader market, however, only saw isolated pockets of activity that were either driven by newsflows or movements in oil prices.

The Straits Times Index opened the week with a 27-point loss, recovered all of this on Tuesday and Wednesday, then fell back on Thursday before rising 5.43 on Friday to 3,324.13, bringing its net loss for the five days to 0.26 point.