Singapore stocks fall at Friday's open; STI down 0.3%

SINGAPORE stocks fell in early trade on Friday (Feb 11) after US stocks ended sharply lower overnight.

The Straits Times Index (STI) was down 0.3 per cent or 10.24 points to 3,417.76 as at 9.03 am.

Losers outnumbered gainers 105 to 43 after 94 million securities worth S$102.6 million changed hands.

QT Vascular 5I0 was the most actively traded counter by volume on Friday morning. Shares of the company traded flat at S$0.005 with 10.6 million shares trading hands.

Mapletree North Asia Commercial Trust (MNACT) RW0U and Mapletree Commercial Trust (MCT) N2IU were also among the most heavily traded securities. Units of MNACT dropped 0.9 per cent or S$0.01 to S$1.11, while MCT units fell 1.1 per cent or S$0.02 to S$1.82. This comes after fund management Quarz Capital Management issued a letter on Thursday stating its view of the proposed merger between MNACT and MCT as "value destructive" for MNACT.

Another actively traded counter by volume was Jiutian Chemical C8R . Its shares were trading at S$0.088, down by 1.1 per cent or S$0.001.

The trio of local banks were mixed at the open. DBS D05 rose 0.5 per cent or S$0.20 to S$37.05, while shares of both UOB U11 and OCBC O39 dropped. UOB tumbled 0.4 per cent or S$0.13 to S$32.41, while OCBC fell 0.08 per cent or S$0.01 to S$13.23 as at 9.03 am.

Over on Wall Street, US stocks ended sharply lower on Thursday following the latest inflation report that raised worries over tightening monetary policies and higher lending rates. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1.5 per cent to 35,241.59, the broad-based S&P 500 fell 1.8 per cent to close at 4,504.09, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index was down 2.1 per cent to 14,185.64.

European shares ended slightly lower on Thursday. The pan-European Stoxx 600 index closed 0.2 per cent lower, with the heavyweight technology sector among the top drags.

Elsewhere in Asia, the Tokyo Stock Exchange was closed on Friday for its national day.