Singapore shares edge up at Tuesday's open; STI rises 0.29%

SINGAPORE shares opened higher on Tuesday, with the benchmark Straits Times Index gaining 0.29 per cent or 9.30 points to 3,260.37 as at 9.02am. 

Gainers outnumbered losers 85 to 21, after about 59.9 million shares worth S$40.4 million changed hands. 

Among the most heavily traded by volume was The Trendlines Group, which jumped 11.2 per cent or 1.2 Singapore cents to 11.9 cents with 9.5 million shares traded. Before the market opened, the Catalist-listed startup incubator had announced that one of its portfolio companies is in negotiations for the sale of all its shares to an unnamed public corporation.

Meanwhile, TEE International shed 3.1 per cent, or 0.2 Singapore cent to 6.2 cents, with 7.8 million shares traded as at 9.02am. The mainboard-listed company on Monday night said it had entered into a conditional agreement to sell its 63.28 per cent stake in TEE Land to a unit of Malaysia's Amcorp Group for S$50.62 million in cash.

Shares in TEE Land gained 2.4 per cent, or 0.4 Singapore cent to 17.3 cents on Tuesday morning. 

Banking stocks were all in the green shortly after the opening bell. DBS gained 0.6 per cent, or 15 Singapore cents to S$26.25, OCBC Bank added 0.2 per cent, or two Singapore cents to S$11.08, and United Overseas Bank rose 0.5 per cent, or 13 Singapore cents to S$26.95. 

Other active index stocks included Thai Beverage which fell 1.7 per cent, or 1.5 Singapore cents to S$0.875 on a cum-dividend basis, and CapitaLand Mall Trust which gained 1.2 per cent, or three Singapore cents to S$2.58. 

Over in the US, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq surged to fresh records overnight with the signing of a phase one trade deal between US and China merely days away. 

The broad-based S&P 500 jumped 0.7 per cent, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index gained 1 per cent, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced 0.3 per cent. 

Elsewhere in Asia, Japan's Topix rose 0.3 per cent as at 8.05am, while Australian and South Korean stocks gained 0.7 per cent each.