Singapore shares edge up at Wednesday's open; STI up 0.03%

SINGAPORE stocks inched up in the first few minutes of trade, as investor concern over the novel coronavirus started to wane, along with a strong showing on Wall Street and Europe.

The Straits Times Index gained 0.03 per cent or 0.93 point to 3,157.50 as at 9.03am on Wednesday.

Gainers outnumbered losers 83 to 44, after about 75.2 million securities worth S$86 million changed hands.

Among the most heavily traded were Addvalue Technologies, which rose 0.3 Singapore cent or 11.5 per cent to S$0.029 with 9.7 million shares traded, Ntegrator International went up 0.2 Singapore cent or 16.7 per cent to S$0.014 with 6.4 million shares traded. Yangzijiang Shipbuilding fell 1.5 Singapore cents or 1.5 per cent to S$0.96 with 5.7 million shares traded.

Banking stocks started the morning trade in the red. DBS lost four Singapore cents or 0.2 per cent to S$25.11, UOB fell two Singapore cents or 0.1 per cent to S$25.77, while OCBC dropped three Singapore cents or 0.3 per cent to S$10.82.

Other active index securities included Ascendas Real Estate Investment Trust which rose two Singapore cents or 0.6 per cent to S$3.19 on a cum-dividend basis. CapitaLand Mall Trust dropped one Singapore cent or 0.4 per cent to S$2.47.

The Singapore bourse's slight gains on Wednesday morning follow Wall Street's rally overnight. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 1.4 per cent to finish the session at 28,807.63. The broad-based S&P 500 rose 1.5 per cent closing at 3,297.59, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index surged 2.1 per cent to 9,467.97.

In Europe, shares clocked their biggest one-day gain in nearly four months on Tuesday. Upbeat earnings updates from BP and Glencore along with China's moves to support its markets lifted sentiment.

Elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific region, Tokyo stocks opened on higher ground as investors grew confident from rallies on Wall Street and a cheaper yen, with fears easing over an economic hit from the coronavirus outbreak. The Nikkei 225 index was up 1.36 per cent to 23,398.23 in early trade, while the Topix index was up 1.25 per cent to 1,705.25.