Singapore stocks fall at Thursday's open; STI down 0.9%

SINGAPORE stocks fell in early trade on Thursday (Dec 2) after Wall Street ended with sharp losses for the second day in a row.

The Straits Times Index (STI) dipped 0.9 per cent or 28.25 points to 3,070 as at 9.04 am.

Losers outnumbered gainers 117 to 53, after 100.6 million securities worth S$99.7 million changed hands.

Medtecs International 546 was among the most actively traded securities, rising 6.2 per cent or S$0.025 to S$0.43, with 3.7 million shares traded.

Genting Singapore G13 was down 2 per cent or S$0.015 to S$0.745, with some 3.6 million shares changing hands, while Oceanus 579 went up 3.5 per cent or S$0.001 to S$0.03, with 3 million shares changing hands.

The trio of local banks were a sea of red at the open. DBS D05 was down 1.2 per cent or S$0.36 to S$31.02, UOB U11 fell 0.7 per cent or S$0.18 to S$25.95, while OCBC O39 slipped 1 per cent or S$0.11 to S$11.16 as at 9.04 am.

Other active index counters include Singtel Z74, which declined 1.7 per cent or S$0.04 to S$2.36, and ComfortDelGro C52 , which lost 0.7 per cent or S$0.01 to S$1.37.

Over on Wall Street, stocks finished with steep losses on Wednesday (Dec 1), after US authorities announced the first confirmed case of the Covid-19 Omicron variant in the country.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1.3 per cent to end at 34,022.07, down around 460 points following a loss of about 650 points in the prior session.

The broad-based S&P 500 shed 1.2 per cent to close at 4,513.01, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index fell 1.8 per cent to 15,254.05.

Meanwhile in Europe, the pan-European Stoxx 600 rose 1.7 per cent, recovering from a sharp sell-off in the previous session.

Elsewhere in the region, Tokyo stocks opened lower on Thursday. The benchmark Nikkei 225 index was down 1 per cent or 282.46 points at 27,653.16 in early trade, while the broader Topix index fell 0.7 per cent or 12.60 points to 1,924.14.