FOMC minutes, banks at the forefront of STI moves

THIS week's main driver was the minutes of the US Federal Reserve's Open Markets Committee (FOMC) meeting, which indicated that China is not longer a concern and that although interest rates will be raised at the December FOMC meeting, the pace of rate hikes thereafter will be gradual.

This information was apparently welcomed by the market, leading to a big jump on Wall Street on Wednesday, which prompted a rebound here on Thursday.

We say "apparently" because a more likely explanation for that bounce was that the Fed minutes triggered short-covering that produced a large bounce because of the aggressive amounts of short selling that preceded it.