Singapore shares rise at Tuesday’s open; STI up 0.1% 

SINGAPORE stocks rose in early trade on Tuesday (May 17), in contrast to key regional markets which continued to stay in the red amid ongoing concerns of inflation and interest rates.

Singapore’s Straits Times Index rose 0.1 per cent or 2.81 points to 3,193.97 as at 9.01 am. Gainers outnumbered losers 99 to 51, after 78.5 million securities worth S$109.4 million changed hands.

One of the most active counters by volume as at 9.03 am was Sembcorp Marine , which rose 2.1 per cent or S$0.002 to S$0.097, with 8.5 million shares changing hands.

Other heavily traded securities included CapitaLand Integrated Commercial Trust , which rose 0.9 per cent or S$0.02 to S$2.29 with 4.6 million units traded, as well as Golden Agri-Resources , which stayed flat at S$0.28, with 3.3 million shares traded.

Meanwhile, banking stocks fell in early morning trade. DBS was trading down 0.4 per cent or S$0.11 at S$31.12, UOB was down 0.2 per cent or S$0.06 to S$28.43, while OCBC fell 0.1 per cent or S$0.01 to S$11.70.

Other active index counters included Singapore Telecommunications which stayed flat at S$2.75 and CapitaLand Investment Management which was up 0.3 per cent or S$0.01 to S$3.80.

In the United States, Wall Street stocks finished mostly lower on Monday following weak Chinese economic data that added to worries of an impending recession.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average eked out a 0.1 per cent gain to 32,223.42.

The broad-based S&P 500 shed 0.4 per cent to 4,008.01, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index tumbled 1.2 per cent to 11,662.79.

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Meanwhile, European stocks closed flat on Monday as gains in miners limited earlier declines, while French and German stocks fell the most following the weak economic data in China which fanned global recession fears.

The pan- European Stoxx 600 index closed flat, after posting its first weekly gain in five on Friday.

Elsewhere in Asia, Tokyo’s stocks opened lower on Tuesday following the lacklustre performance on Wall Street.

The benchmark Nikkei 225 index opened marginally higher but soon dipped 0.16 per cent or 42.83 per cent to 26,504.22, while the broader Topix index edged down 0.04 per cent, or 0.71 points, to 1,862.55.