Singapore shares open higher on Friday; STI up 0.07%

SINGAPORE stocks opened higher on Friday, tracking record gains in the US. The Straits Times Index gained 0.07 per cent or 2.23 points to 3,225.22 points as at 9.03am on Friday.

Gainers outnumbered losers 74 to 25, after about 53.3 million securities worth S$20.4 million changed hands.

Among the most heavily traded was Golden Agri-Resources, which rose 2.3 per cent or 0.5 Singapore cent to S$0.22 with 41.5 million shares traded. Thomson Medical rose 5 per cent or 0.3 Singapore cent to S$0.063, after 17 million shares changed hands. Meanwhile, Rex International increased 1 per cent or 0.2 Singapore cent to S$0.197 with 8.2 million shares changing hands. 

Banking stocks started the morning mixed. DBS dipped 0.2 per cent or five Singapore cents to S$25.95, OCBC Bank rose 0.3 per cent or three Singapore cents to S$10.97, and UOB held steady at S$26.40. 

Other active index securities included Dyna-Mac which rose 4.4 per cent or 0.7 Singapore cent to $0.165, and Sembcorp Marine which gained 1.5 per cent or two Singapore cents to S$1.33.

The Singapore bourse's slight gains on Friday morning follows rallies on Wall Street overnight on US-China trade deal optimism.

The three indices finished at records, with the Nasdaq climbing 0.8 per cent to close at 9,022.39, finishing above 9,000 for the first time. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.4 per cent to end at 28,621.39, while the S&P 500 gained 0.5 per cent to close at 3,230.91.

Encouraged by US rallies, Tokyo stocks opened higher on Friday. The Nikkei 225 index inched up 0.09 per cent to 23,946.16 in early trade, while the Topix index was rose 0.2 per cent to 1,734.74.