Singapore stocks open higher on Monday, tracking Wall Street gains; STI up 0.1%

SINGAPORE shares opened slightly higher on Monday, tracking gains from Wall Street at the close of last week.

The Straits Times Index (STI) rose 0.1 per cent or 1.54 points to 3,158.59 as at 9.03am.

Gainers outnumbered losers 122 to 49, after 64.12 million securities worth S$61.65 million changed hands.

Spackman 40E was the most actively traded counter by volume on Monday morning, with eight million shares changing hands at the open. Its share price remained unchanged at half a Singapore cent.

SPH T39 was also actively traded, with 6.1 million shares worth S$11.3 million changing hands in early trade. The counter rose S$0.02 or 1.1 per cent to S$1.87.

Among index counters, Yangzijiang Shipbuilding BS6 saw heavy trading on Monday morning. The counter was unchanged at S$1.41, after 1.6 million shares worth S$2.3 million were traded.

The trio of local banks were mixed in early trade. DBS D05 was down 0.1 per cent or S$0.04 to S$30.17, OCBC O39 slipped 0.3 per cent or S$0.04 to S$12.08, while UOB U11 edged up 0.1 per cent or S$0.03 to S$26.04 as at 9.03am.

In the US, stocks rocketed to fresh highs on Friday with the Dow finishing above 35,000 for the first time, in anticipation of more record earnings this week after last week's set of strong results.

All three major indices finished the week at record levels, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average surging 0.7 per cent to close at 35,061.55. The broad-based S&P 500 jumped 1 per cent to 4,411.79, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index advanced 1 per cent to 14,836.99. The closing numbers mark a sharp reversal from the start of the week, when the Dow suffered its worst session of 2021 amid worries over rising Covid-19 Delta variant infections.

Meanwhile, European stocks closed at all-time highs on Friday as optimism about the earnings season and the European Central Bank's pledge of continued monetary support outweighed risks of a resurgence in Covid-19 cases. The pan-European Stoxx 600 index rallied 1.1 per cent to hit a record high of 461.75 - marking a 1.5 per cent weekly rise, its biggest weekly gain since early May.

Elsewhere in Asia, Tokyo stocks opened higher on Monday as investors took heart from rallies on Wall Street, overcoming fears about the spread of the Delta variant. The benchmark Nikkei 225 index was up 1.6 per cent or 457.47 points at 28,005.47 in early trade, while the broader Topix index gained 1.6 per cent or 30.81 points to 1,935.22.