Buying on dips drives STI up 0.4%

THE Singapore bourse determinedly kicked off February on a cheerful note as the selling pressure evident in the past few sessions somewhat eased up. Furthermore, a slew of macro data out of the region, albeit a bit mixed, and strong payrolls data in the US provided no reason to alter the rosy economic picture.

Toss in Wall Street that managed to snap out of a two-day sell-off overnight and it seemed an opportune time for traders to buy on dips and push the key Straits Times Index up to finish at 3,547.23, up 13.24 points or 0.4 per cent.

Other Asian bourses fared mix with gains in Japan's Nikkei 225, South Korea's Kospi and Australia's ASX 200 while Hong Kong's Hang Seng and China's Shanghai Composite logged losses. Traders will be keeping a hawk eye on earnings to be released by tech giants during the US session, namely Apple, Google parent Alphabet, Amazon.com and Alibaba, as well as manufacturing and construction spending out of the US, the world's largest economy.