STI at 7-year high but penny stocks rule again

THE Straits Times Index may have risen 12.01 to 3,484.39 on Monday, its highest closing in slightly more than seven years but you wouldn't know it speaking to dealers since the action and excitement was mostly in churning penny stocks - the lower priced, the better.

So it was that the more relevant numbers to describe how Monday's session went was perhaps not so much the STI's move but instead turnover - 3.4 billion units worth S$1.3 billion was traded for a average value per unit of S$0.38. Excluding warrants there were 307 rises versus 187 falls. Volume done in the 30 STI components was just S$192 million, only 15 per cent of the whole market's business, way below last year's average of about 50-60 per cent. As an illustration, a year ago on Monday April 14, STI stocks traded S$483 million, or 56 per cent, of the day's total of S$870 million.

The day's most active stock was Digiland which ended unchanged at S$0.001, the counter chalking up volume of 297 million units. Sixteen of the top 20 actives were priced below S$0.20 per share, the exceptions being SIIC Environment, Noble Group, Thai Beverage and IHC.