STI ends lower in another muted session

WIKIPEDIA defines Chinese water torture as "a process in which water is slowly dripped onto a person's forehead, allegedly making the restrained victim insane''.

Traders here scoff at this as a form of punishment, pointing out that they have been undergoing a far worse fate - slow death by terminal boredom for more months than they would care to remember.

Wednesday's session provided a good example of this, when the Straits Times Index (STI) hardly twitched for the whole session before sliding in the afternoon to a net loss of 8.67 points at 3,280.28.