Singapore equities fall at Friday's open; STI drops 0.5%
SINGAPORE stocks tumbled on Friday (Mar 4) morning, following US stocks' retreat over the Russian invasion of Ukraine and fears of climbing oil prices.
The Straits Times Index (STI) dipped 0.5 per cent or 17.72 points to 3,235.93 as at 9.01 am.
Losers outnumbered gainers 106 to 32 as 63.4 million securities worth S$92.8 million changed hands.
Sembcorp Marine S51 was the top counter by volume in early trade. The offshore and marine company's securities were trading flat at S$0.094 with 15.1 million shares moving.
Golden Agri-Resources' shares E5H were also heavily traded. The palm oil company was up 1.5 per cent or S$0.005 at S$0.33 with 6.3 million shares changing hands.
Rounding out the top 3 by volume was entertainment company mm2 Asia 1B0 , whose shares were down 3.1 per cent or S$0.002 at S$0.063 on Friday morning with 3.5 million shares on the move.
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The 3 local banks were a sea of red on Friday morning. DBS shares D05 slipped 1 per cent or S$0.33 to S$32.90, while UOB shares U11 fell 0.7 per cent or S$0.20 to S$29.66. OCBC's counter O39 declined 0.5 per cent or S$0.06 to S$11.62.
In the US, Wall Street stocks retreated on Thursday as investors monitored the worsening toll of the Russian invasion of Ukraine amid worries over high oil prices.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.3 per cent to 33,794.66. The broad-based S&P 500 shed 0.5 per cent to 4,363.49, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index tumbled 1.6 per cent to 13,537.94 following big drops in Amazon and Tesla.
Meanwhile, European shares closed sharply lower on Thursday as concerns over the impact of mounting sanctions against Russia weighed on sentiment even as a relentless rally in commodity prices boosted mining stocks. The pan-European Stoxx 600 index slipped 2 per cent, having given up modest gains soon after the open.
Elsewhere in Asia, Tokyo shares opened lower on Friday on worries over the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with investor attention also on key US jobs data due later in the day. The benchmark Nikkei 225 index was down 0.7 per cent or 172.76 points at 26,404.51, while the broader Topix index was down 0.6 per cent or 11.11 points at 1,870.69.
READ MORE:
- Stocks to watch: Jardine Matheson, Hongkong Land, Dairy Farm, Mandarin Oriental, Yangzijiang
- Straits Times Index constituents unchanged after March review
- Golden Agri-Resources H2 profit up 71.2% to US$323m
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