Singapore stocks rise at Thursday's open, tracking Wall Street gains; STI up 0.3%

SINGAPORE shares pushed into positive territory on Thursday (Dec 9), amid volatile trading sessions in the US and Europe overnight.

The Straits Times Index (STI) rose 0.3 per cent or 7.72 points to 3,137.49 as at 9.03 am.

Gainers outnumbered losers 85 to 37, after 46.8 million securities worth S$65.3 million changed hands.

The most active counter by volume was DiSa 532 , which jumped 50 per cent or S$0.001 to S$0.003, with 10.8 million shares changing hands as at 9.04 am. The digital security firm on Wednesday (Dec 8) said its subsidiary company has tied up with the National University of Singapore and Singapore Health Services to commercialise new saliva-based Covid-19 antigen rapid test kits.

Other heavily traded counters include Sembcorp Marine S51, which was flat at S$0.084 with 2.9 million shares traded as at 9.04 am, and Rex International 5WH , which gained 1.7 per cent or S$0.005 to S$0.30, with 2 million shares changing hands.

Banking stocks were mixed in early trade. DBS D05 was down 0.03 per cent or S$0.01 to S$31.98, UOB U11 increased 0.4 per cent or S$0.10 to S$26.92, while OCBC O39 slipped 0.2 per cent or S$0.02 to S$11.37 as at 9.04 am.

Other active index counters include CapitaLand Investment 9CI , which was up 1.2 per cent or S$0.04 to S$3.41 as at 9.04 am, and Jardine Matheson, which gained 3.3 per cent or US$1.76 to US$55.90. The blue-chip on Wednesday announced plans to double the size of its share buyback scheme to US$500 million.

Wall Street closed higher on Wednesday for the third straight session as investors digested news of the apparent effectiveness of 3-dose vaccinations against the Omicron strain. Major indices were in the red for a large part of the trading session but rallied towards the end to close higher.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.1 per cent to finish at 35,754.75, the broad-based S&P 500 rose 0.3 per cent to 4,701.21, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite advanced 0.6 per cent to 15,786.99.

In Europe, stocks ended lower on Wednesday. After gaining 3.8 per cent over the past 2 days, the regional Stoxx 600 index closed 0.6 per cent lower.

Elsewhere in Asia, Tokyo stocks opened lower on Thursday amid profit-taking. The Nikkei 225 index slipped 0.1 per cent to 28,830.92 in early trade, while the Topix index dropped 0.04 per cent to 2,001.35.