Singapore stocks open higher on Friday; STI up 0.7%

SINGAPORE shares opened in positive territory on Friday following Wall Street's partial rebound from its previous decline.

The Straits Times Index (STI) advanced 0.7 per cent or 19.44 points to 2,939.74 as at 9am.

Gainers outnumbered losers 133 to 24 after more than 126.7 million securities worth S$105.1 million changed hands.

MMP Resources was the most heavily traded counter by volume, with more than 44.3 million shares worth S$90,000 changing hands. Its share price tumbled 66.7 per cent or 0.4 Singapore cent to 0.2 cents as at 9am.

Index stock Keppel Corp slipped S$0.06 or 1.1 per cent to S$5.40 after announcing on Thursday that its subsidiary Keppel Offshore & Marine will exit the offshore rig-building business after completing existing rigs under construction, amid restructuring plans.

Beverage giant ThaiBev was up S$0.01 or 1.2 per cent at S$0.83 as at 9.15am. This comes after market chatter of the possible listing of its brewery unit on the Singapore Exchange - potentially the largest listing in Singapore in a decade.

All three local banks were up in early trade. DBS rose S$0.12 or 0.5 per cent to S$25.56, UOB gained S$0.26 or 1.1 per cent to S$23.58, while OCBC advanced S$0.15 or 1.4 per cent to S$10.54 as at 9am.

Wall Street staged a partial rebound on Thursday from the previous session's rout following mixed economic data. The market also welcomed new restrictions on trading in poorly-performing companies whose share prices had jumped massively, such as GameStop.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished 1 per cent higher at 30,603.36, the broad-based S&P 500 gained 1 per cent to 3,787.38, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index advanced 0.5 per cent to 13,337.16.

Meanwhile, European stocks closed in the black on Thursday following the bounce in US equities, while gains in airlines and upbeat earnings reports drove a reversal of early losses across markets. After falling as much as 2 per cent in morning trade, the pan-European Stoxx 600 closed 0.1 per cent higher, leaving the benchmark with small gains for the year.

Elsewhere in Asia, Tokyo stocks opened higher on Friday on the back of the Wall Street gains, with investors also focused on corporate earnings. The benchmark Nikkei 225 index was up 0.4 per cent or 99.01 points at 28,296.43 in early trade, while the broader Topix index gained 0.2 per cent or 3 points to 1,841.85.