Singapore stocks fall at Wednesday's open; STI drops 0.4%

SINGAPORE stocks fell in early trade on Wednesday (Mar 2) morning after Wall Street ended in the red overnight.

The Straits Times Index (STI) tumbled 0.4 per cent or 14.17 points to 3,264.46 as at 9.02 am.

Losers outnumbered gainers 89 to 56 after 74.9 million securities worth S$127.4 million changed hands.

The most actively traded counter by volume on Wednesday morning was mainboard-listed Yangzijiang Shipbuilding BS6. The counter rose by 4.2 per cent or S$0.06 to S$1.50. The group on Sunday posted a 54 per cent growth in its net profit to 2.06 billion yuan (S$441.4 million) for the 6 months ended Dec 31, 2021.

Oceanus 579 was also actively traded at Wednesday's open, with shares trading flat at S$0.025. Another heavily traded security was Geo Energy Resources RE4 . The counter traded up 2.2 per cent or S$0.01 to S$0.475.

The trio of local banks all fell on Wednesday morning.

DBS D05 dropped 1.2 per cent or S$0.40 to S$34.02, OCBC O39 was down 0.9 per cent or S$0.10 to S$11.63, while UOB U11 tumbled 0.8 per cent or S$0.23 to S$30.13 as at 9.02 am.

Over on Wall Street, US stocks tumbled on Tuesday over worries about the worsening human and economic toll of the Russian attack on Ukraine.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended down 1.8 per cent at 33,294.95. The broad-based S&P 500 fell 1.6 per cent to 4,306.26, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index shed 1.6 per cent to 13,532.46.

Meanwhile, European stocks fell on Tuesday with weak earnings reports and jitters over the Ukraine crisis as Russia raged on with its attack after ceasefire talks between the 2 nations failed to reach a breakthrough. The pan-European Stoxx 600 index dropped 1.7 per cent.

Elsewhere in Asia, Tokyo stocks opened lower on Wednesday, extending drops on Wall Street. The benchmark Nikkei 225 index was down 1.2 per cent or 329.94 points at 26,514.78 in early trade, while the broader Topix index fell 1.2 per cent or 22.72 points to 1,874.45.