Singapore: STI rises 15 points over the week

Movements in the Straits Times Index each day appear to be driven more by expectations of how Wall Street might perform later that same day than how it did the evening before. This has been apparent for many months now and so it was this week, during which the Straits Times Index rose 15 points to 3,417.51 over the five days.

In Friday's session the index gained 22.24 points, reversing all of Thursday's 20-points loss, most likely because of expectations that Friday's US jobs report would be market friendly and lead to a stock market rally. The rise was led by SingTel, Jardine Matheson and Hongkong Land.

Daily turnover here has hovered around the S$1 billion mark for several weeks now, though business done on Thursday was only S$934 million. On Friday, 1 billion units worth S$1.1 billion were traded. Despite the index's gain, the broad market recorded 202 rises versus 219 falls.