Rough ride ahead as STI loses grip on 3,000 level

IT WAS Miss Scarlet in the dealing room with a lead pipe - or what amounted to one. Local shares were beaten down on Friday in a bloody finale to the market's worst week this year, as the benchmark Straits Times Index (STI) took a painful tumble below the 3,000-point mark and stayed there without getting back up.

The index's abrupt fall to its lowest point since November 2012 sparked a flurry of market analyst reports with headlines that might have been right at home in a whodunit novel. "Murder on the equity floor", one cried. Another declared: "Someone call 911".

"This is breaking off a huge, huge psychological support, and there is no over-emphasising how huge this is," Phillip Futures analyst Howie Lee said in a note. "We are in for a rough ride ahead."