Singapore stocks rise at Monday's open; STI up 0.3%

SINGAPORE stocks rose in early trade on Monday (Jan 31) after US shares ended on a positive note on Friday.

The Straits Times Index (STI) was up 0.3 per cent or 8.88 points to 3255.21 as at 9.03 am.

Gainers outnumbered losers 80 to 34 after 44.9 million securities worth S$89.1 million changed hands.

One of the most active counters by volume was Catalist-listed Sembcorp Marine S51 . Shares of the company traded flat at S$0.082 with 5.1 million shares trading hands.

CapitaLand Integrated Commercial Trust C 38U  also saw heavy trading on Monday. Shares of the real estate investment trust were down 0.5 per cent or S$0.01 to S$1.93.

Other heavily traded securities included building services company King Wan Corp 554 and Jiutian Chemical Group C8R .

King Wan traded up 5.6 per cent or S$0.002 to S$0.038, while Jiutian Chemical traded flat at S$0.085 with 2.1 million shares trading hands.

The trio of local banks all rose on Monday morning. DBS D05 was up 1.2 per cent or S$0.42 to S$35.24 while UOB U11 rose 0.7 per cent or S$0.22 to S$30.17 and OCBC O39 ga ined 0.4 per cent or S$0.05 to S$12.47 as at 9.03 am.

Over on Wall Street, US stocks ended in green on Friday, after strong Apple earnings and data suggesting a moderation in inflation in December.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 1.7 per cent to 34,725.47. While the broad-based S&P 500 advanced 2.4 per cent to 4,431.85 and the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index jumped 3.1 per cent to 13,770.57.

Meanwhile, European shares fell on Friday, amid the prospect of higher interest rates and concern over the situation in Russia and Ukraine.The pan-European Stoxx 600 was down by 1 per cent. The index lost 1.8 per cent this week, marking its worst performance in over 2 months.

Elsewhere in Asia, Tokyo stocks opened lower on Monday. The benchmark Nikkei 225 index was down 0.4 per cent or 96.75 points at 26,620.59 in early trade, while the broader Topix index slipped 0.5 per cent or 8.75 points to 1,868.14.