Singapore shares fall at Thursday's open; STI down 0.7%

SINGAPORE stocks began trading on Thursday morning in negative territory, with the Straits Times Index (STI) dropping 18.82 points or 0.7 per cent to 2,650.80 as at 9.04am.

This came after Singapore's non-oil exports fell 4.5 per cent in May, registering their first monthly drop this year, according to figures released by Enterprise Singapore on Wednesday.

On the Singapore bourse, decliners outnumbered advancers 91 to 46, after about 80.8 million securities worth S$108.6 million changed hands.

Among the index securities, the most heavily traded by volume was ComfortDelGro, which lost S$0.02 or 1.2 per cent to S$1.63, with 3.9 million shares traded. Mapletree Logistics Trust inched up S$0.01 or 0.5 per cent to S$1.96, with 1.3 million units changing hands.

The trio of banking stocks were mixed in early trade. DBS shed S$0.28 or 1.3 per cent to S$21.29, UOB slipped S$0.05 or 0.2 per cent to S$20.98, while OCBC Bank edged up S$0.01 or 0.1 per cent to S$9.17.

Other active securities include Jardine Matheson Holdings, which lost US$0.75 or 1.7 per cent to US$42.50, and CapitaLand, which fell S$0.02 or 0.7 per cent to S$3.

Over in the US, equities closed lower overnight as investors monitored spikes in coronavirus cases, amid worries that Wall Street stocks might be overvalued.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished at 26,119.61, down 0.7 per cent, the broad-based S&P 500 declined 0.4 per cent to 3,113.49, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index gained 0.2 per cent to 9,910.53.

Elsewhere in Asia, Japanese stocks opened lower on Thursday as fears of a second wave of Covid-19 infections and a stronger yen weighed on the market.