FOR much of this year, the Straits Times Index moved in tandem with the Dow futures, thus functioning as a sort of advance barometer for Wall Street in the session ahead. So if the Dow futures rose and the STI followed suit, it was a safe bet that the US market would be firm a few hours later.

This of course then meant that movements in the index here tended to anticipate Wall Street's performance rather than react to it, which some observers might consider counter-intuitive given that the US is seen as the prime driving force for global equities.

It does however, make sense because even though markets may not be as efficient or perfect as they are made out to be, they do prefer to look ahead instead of behind them.