Singapore stocks fall amid tech rout; STI down 0.2%

[SINGAPORE] Singapore stocks ended lower on Monday (Jul 20) amid a tech rout in Asian markets.

The dip coincided with the launch of Kimi 3.0, an artificial intelligence model by Chinese player Moonshot AI. Kimi 3.0 is said to be comparable to OpenAI’s GPT models and nearly as performant as Anthropic’s Fable 5, while being cheaper.

The benchmark Straits Times Index (STI) lost 0.2 per cent or 10.48 points to finish at 5,498.95.

Mapletree PanAsia Commercial Trust led the gainers on Singapore’s blue-chip index, rising 0.7 per cent or S$0.01 to S$1.35.

The worst performer among STI constituents was Hongkong Land , which fell 1.3 per cent or US$0.10 to US$7.55.

The three local banks were mixed on Monday. DBS was 0.1 per cent or S$0.06 down at S$71.90, while OCBC ended 0.5 per cent or S$0.13 higher at S$28.69 and UOB rose 0.4 per cent or S$0.19 to S$42.66.

Within the iEdge Singapore Next 50 Index, CSE Global was the top gainer, rising 7.1 per cent or S$0.08 to S$1.21.

Centurion was the index’s biggest decliner, falling 2.5 per cent or S$0.04 to S$1.57.

Across the broader market, gainers outnumbered losers 314 to 235, after 1.1 billion securities valued at S$1.7 billion changed hands.

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Key regional indices were mixed. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index gained 2.4 per cent, while South Korea’s Kospi was down 4.5 per cent and the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI closed 0.5 per cent lower.

Malik Ahmed Khan, senior equity analyst at Morningstar, said the launch of Kimi 3.0 puts “downward pressure on AI companies across hardware and infrastructure”.

But he also said that this move does not equate the Chinese model to “near-parity” with American frontier models, such as Fable 5, due to a history of inflated results in the past.

This article has been written with the assistance of AI and reviewed by a reporter