Bank shares down, market follows suit

THE three banks were the primary drivers of the Straits Times Index's 25-point gain on Wednesday and so it was that falls in DBS and OCBC on Thursday helped pull the index 18.96 points down to 3,315.60. The broad market weakened in tandem, with 147 rises versus 263 falls. Turnover was 1.1 billion units worth S$1.04 billion - average by recent standards.

Over in Hong Kong, the Hang Seng Index closed lower for the fourth consecutive day after the launch of the market's link with the Shanghai exchange. Brokers, however, said this did not have much of an influence on the session here as the local market has been running on its own steam for several months now.

The other large drags on the index came from a S$0.03 drop in SingTel to S$3.90 which came with 28 million shares traded, a S$0.12 drop in Keppel Corp to S$9.15 and weakness in the Jardine group.