STI clings to 52-week high as geopolitical worries hit markets

IT was a tragic end to a largely uneventful week as news of the downing of a Malaysia Airlines aircraft on Thursday over Ukraine led to a large selloff on Wall Street, raising geopolitical worries and dampening already fragile sentiment in markets everywhere.

However, the absence of liquidity and meaningful interest in Singapore may have helped stocks here escape relatively unscathed. After dropping slightly into the red, the Straits Times Index yesterday managed a net rise of 3.64 points to a new 52-week high of 3,310.53. This brings its gain for the week to 17 points or 0.5 per cent.

Turnover has been poor for many months now and yesterday's 1.5 billion units worth S$819 million was the seventh consecutive day that dollar business was under S$1 billion. Excluding warrants there were 191 rises against 207 falls.