Singapore shares muted at Thursday's open; STI up 0.03%

Vivienne Tay

Published Thu, Jul 16, 2020 · 01:44 AM

Singapore Stocks

SINGAPORE stocks were little changed on Thursday after Wall Street stocks finished Wednesday stronger on vaccine hopes.

Singapore's Straits Times Index was up 0.03 per cent or 0.74 point to 2,649.64 as at 9.04am.

Gainers outnumbered losers 79 to 47, after 50.3 million securities worth S$56.5 million changed hands.

The most active counter by volume as at 9.03am was Golden Agri-Resources, which held steady at 15.3 Singapore cents, with 6.3 million shares traded. Genting Singapore fell 0.6 per cent or 0.5 Singapore cent to 78 cents, with 4.7 million shares changing hands. This followed news of Resorts World Singapore holding a "one-off workforce rationalisation" on Wednesday - just two weeks after the integrated resort reopened.

Other heavily traded securities included Singtel, which declined 0.4 per cent or S$0.01 to S$2.53 on a cum-dividend basis, with 1.6 million shares changing hands.

Banking stocks were mixed in early morning trade. As at 9.03am, DBS declined 0.6 per cent or S$0.12 to S$21.76, UOB was down 0.3 per cent or S$0.06 to S$20.80, while OCBC Bank was up 0.2 per cent or S$0.02 to S$9.29.

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Other active index counters included Singapore Exchange, which fell 0.1 per cent or S$0.01 to S$8.31, as well as Singapore Airlines, which rose 0.5 per cent or S$0.02 to S$3.79.

In the US, stocks advanced again following progress on a leading novel coronavirus vaccine candidate, with travel shares among the winners on Wednesday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished up 0.9 per cent at 26,869.83, the S&P 500 gained 0.9 per cent to 3,226.55, while the Nasdaq Composite Index climbed 0.6 per cent to 10,550.49.

Elsewhere in Asia, Tokyo stocks opened lower on Thursday in cautious trade as investors awaited China's GDP data due later in the day. The Nikkei 225 index fell 0.3 per cent to 22,888.46 in early trade, while the broader Topix index edged down 0.1 per cent to 1,588.24.