Singapore shares open lower on Thursday; STI down 0.4%

SINGAPORE stocks opened slightly lower on Thursday (Jul 14) morning as major stock markets were also in the red.

The Straits Times Index (STI) shed 0.4 per cent or 10.96 points to 3,117.73 as at 9.01 am. Decliners outnumbered advancers 62 to 31 after 22.6 million securities worth S$30.9 million changed hands.

Sembcorp Marine was the top traded counter by volume, trading flat at S$0.10 with some 2.9 million shares traded in the morning.

Yangzijiang Shipbuilding , an index stock, was the second most heavily traded security by volume. Its shares were down 0.6 per cent or S$0.005 at S$0.88 with 1 million shares changing hands at the open. Asiatic , another heavily traded stock, saw 1 million shares traded at the open as its shares dropped 50 per cent or S$0.003 to S$0.003.

Index counter ComfortDelGro slid 0.7 per cent or S$0.01 to S$1.41 with 538,700 shares changing hands in the morning.

The transport operator is acquiring Irish coach operator GoBus for 12 million euros (S$17 million), a move that will catapult it to be the third-largest inter-city coach operator in the country. Through the acquisition, ComfortDelGro will get a fleet of 31 buses and 3 inter-city coach routes.

The trio of local banks were down in early trade. As at 9.01 am, DBS lost 0.2 per cent or S$0.06 to S$30.08, UOB opened 0.2 per cent or S$0.06 lower at S$26.30 and OCBC fell 0.5 per cent or S$0.06 to S$11.35.

In the US, Wall Street stocks fell on Wednesday after a latest report showed inflation surging to a fresh peak of 9.1 per cent in June, adding to recession fears and worries about potential Federal Reserve measures to tame prices.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.7 per cent to 30.772.79. The broad-based S&P 500 fell 0.5 per cent to 3,801.78, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index slipped 0.2 per cent to 11,247.58.

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Over in Europe, shares also fell as the euro tumbled to parity with the dollar, in addition to news of the US inflation surge.

The pan-European Stoxx 600 index ended 1 per cent lower after data showed US consumer prices recorded the largest annual increase in more than 4 decades amid stubbornly high costs for petrol, food and rent.

Elsewhere in Asia, Tokyo stocks opened lower on Thursday following Wall Street’s losses.

The benchmark Nikkei 225 index fell 0.58 per cent or 152.95 points to 26,325.82 in early trade, while the broader Topix index lost 0.69 per cent or 13.11 points to 1,875.74.