S'pore shares await Fed's guiding light to escape Jackson Hole fog

THROUGHOUT the week, the Singapore stock market behaved like an indecisive hiker lost on a moonless night in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, where the US Federal Reserve's annual Jackson Hole symposium is taking place.

Fed chair Janet Yellen and European Central Bank (ECB) president Mario Draghi were scheduled to give speeches at Jackson Hole only after the Singapore market's Friday close, and without the clarifying light from those events to illuminate the darkness, investors were unwilling to take more than a few steps in either direction before backtracking.

The Straits Times Index (STI) vacillated between positive and negative sessions all week, heading into the weekend at 3,259.57, just 0.2 per cent or 7.58 points higher than its week-ago level.