Singapore shares advance at Tuesday's open after Wall Street surge; STI up 2%

SINGAPORE shares opened stronger on Tuesday in line with other Asian markets. This comes as Wall Street made strong gains overnight, on hopes of a Covid-19 vaccine and as investors took heart that the gradual easing of lockdowns in Europe would stimulate economic growth.

On the Singapore bourse, the Straits Times Index gained 42.93 points or 1.7 per cent to 2,582.21 as at 9.06am. The benchmark index extended its gains in the early morning trade, rising by more than 2 per cent to 2,590.80 as at 9.19am on Tuesday.

Gainers outnumbered losers 222 to 47, after about 309.4 million securities worth S$263.9 million changed hands.

Among the index stocks, the most heavily traded by volume was Genting Singapore which gained 2.5 Singapore cents or 3.4 per cent to 76.5 cents with 3.8 million shares traded, while ComfortDelGro advanced S$0.06 or almost 4 per cent to S$1.57 on a cum-dividend basis, with 2.7 million shares changing hands.

The trio of banking stocks were up in the early session of trading. DBS gained S$0.45 or 2.4 per cent to S$19.53, UOB added S$0.31 or 1.6 per cent to S$19.82, while OCBC Bank rose S$0.19 or 2.2 per cent to S$8.99.

At OCBC's virtual annual general meeting on Monday, chief executive Samuel Tsien said the lender expects to rejig its branch network strategy after the Covid-19 pandemic, because the rising adoption of digital-banking services has permanently diverted some traffic away from its branches.

Meanwhile, other active securities included ESR-Reit which gained one Singapore cent or 2.8 per cent to 36.5 cents, while CapitaLand rose S$0.07 or 2.4 per cent to S$2.94.

Over in the US, Wall Street stocks rocketed higher on Monday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced 3.9 per cent to 24,597.37. The broad-based S&P 500 jumped 3.2 per cent to 2,953.91, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index added 2.4 per cent to 9,234.83.

Elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific region, equities advanced too, spurred on by the Wall Street surge overnight. Japan's Topix gained 2.1 per cent, Australia stocks rose 1.1 per cent, while South Korea's Kospi climbed 2.2 per cent.