Cheerless week for STI after sell-off in HK, China

IT'S been a dismal five days for the local market, perennially living as it does in the shadow of Hong Kong and China and having to endure never-ending comparisons with those two markets, comparisons which typically end unfavourably for Singapore.

Not only that, when Hong Kong and China ran up in huge leaps last month and earlier this month because of the Hong Kong-Shanghai connect, prices here hardly reacted. Traders here could only watch in envy at the volume done during that period - in one particular session, business done in Hong Kong was 50 times that done here.

Yet when the inevitable collapse came this week, the Straits Times Index (STI) caved in.