Singapore shares fall at Wednesday's open tracking Wall St retreat; STI down 0.5%

SINGAPORE shares pulled back on Wednesday tracking a Wall Street retreat, as investors fret over the risks of a second wave of virus infections.

On the Singapore bourse, the benchmark Straits Times Index fell 12.35 points or 0.5 per cent to 2,575.46 as at 9.01am. Decliners outnumbered advancers 100 to 38, after about 142.9 million securities worth S$167.5 million changed hands.

Among the most heavily traded by volume, Mapletree Logistics Trust gained S$0.03 or 1.7 per cent to S$1.82 with 11.2 million units traded, while ComfortDelGro fell S$0.04 or 2.5 per cent to S$1.56 with 9.5 million shares traded.

The trio of banking stocks were down in the early morning trade. DBS fell S$0.01 or 0.1 per cent to S$19.34, UOB slipped S$0.23 or 1.2 per cent to S$19.71, while OCBC Bank lost S$0.04 or 0.5 per cent to S$8.85.

Other active index counters included SATS which dropped S$0.15 or 5.1 per cent to S$2.80, while Singapore Airlines (SIA) declined S$0.19 or 4.4 per cent to S$4.10.

Societe Generale on Tuesday said it is extending a single exceptional payment as a "goodwill gesture" to investors of the 5x Short SIA daily leverage certificates, after some of them protested what they saw as the lack of timely disclosure and unfair pricing by the investment bank.

Over in the US, Wall Street stocks fell after a top government scientist warned against ending the coronavirus shutdowns and reopening the economy too quickly.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished down 1.9 per cent, or more than 450 points, at 23,764.78. Meanwhile, the broad-based S&P 500 fell 2.1 per cent to 2,870.12, and the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index shed 2.1 per cent to close at 9,002.55.

Elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific region, Japan's Topix fell 0.9 per cent, while South Korea's Kospi shed 1.3 per cent. Australian stocks dropped 0.3 per cent.