Singapore shares open slightly lower on Silicon Valley Bank contagion fears; STI down 0.2%
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Vivienne Tay
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SINGAPORE stocks opened slightly weaker on Monday (Mar 13), with banks opening in the red on contagion fears after the US regulators shut Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) to protect customer deposits.
The soft opening also followed a rout on Wall Street and Europe, with all major indexes declining on Friday as investors stayed vexed about the health of the banking sector.
On the Singapore bourse, the Straits Times Index headed down 0.2 per cent or 6.02 points to 3,171.41 as at 9.03 am. Losers outnumbered gainers 77 to 55, after 101.5 million securities worth S$92.2 million changed hands.
The most active counter by volume was Sembcorp Marine , which held steady at S$0.105 with 30.9 million shares changing hands.
Other heavily traded securities included Golden Agri-Resources which remained unchanged at S$0.285 with 11.4 million shares traded and Polaris which was also flat at S$0.001 with 11.2 million shares traded.
Banking stocks started the week lower. DBS fell 0.3 per cent or S$0.11 to S$33.07, UOB was down 0.5 per cent or S$0.15 to S$28.53, while OCBC lost 0.7 per cent or S$0.09 to S$12.28.
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Other active index counters included Singtel which climbed 0.8 per cent or S$0.02 to S$2.38, and CapitaLand Ascendas Reit , which opened 1.5 per cent or S$0.04 higher at S$2.73.
Most major indexes in the US fell on Friday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average declined 1.1 per cent to close at 31,898.86, the S&P 500 fell 1.5 per cent to 3,859.23, while the Nasdaq Composite lost 1.9 per cent 11,122.58.
Notably, the KBW regional banking index fell 3.6 per cent while the S&P 500 financials index dropped 1.7 per cent.
California bank regulators said they closed SVB Financial Group to protect deposits after the bank failed to shore up its balance sheet through a proposed stock sale. The matter is widely seen to be one of the largest bank failures since the financial crisis.
In Europe, shares closed to a seven-week low on Friday, with financial stocks leading declines. The pan-European Stoxx 600 index finished 1.4 per cent lower and down 2.3 per cent on the week – its steepest weekly fall so far in 2023.
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