HK bounce and Wall Street fail to lift STI

A weak session on Thursday ended with the Straits Times Index (STI) falling 22.58 points or 0.76 per cent to 2,959.01 in a low volume of 1.1 billion units worth S$944.7 million. The fall came mainly through selling of the banks and happened despite a large bounce in Hong Kong and a slight gain for the Dow futures, which suggested a firm Thursday for Wall Street.

Brokers said that at its recent high, the market had rebounded about 12 per cent from its September selloff, and, given a disappointing third-quarter earnings, could thus be expected to undergo a correction. Thursday's slide was the STI's fifth in a row, in a losing streak that has lost it 80 points or 2.6 per cent.

Liquidity has been a problem for all of 2015, and so it was again on Thursday, when trading in the 30 STI components at 219.3 million units worth S$648.2 million accounted for 69 per cent of the whole market's dollar value traded.