Singapore shares open higher on Friday; STI up 0.4% to 3,289.79

SINGAPORE stocks ticked upwards on the last trading day of the week, with the Straits Times Index moving up 12.21 points to 3,289.79 as at 9.04am on Friday.

Gainers outnumbered losers 64 to 36, or about nine up for every five down, as some 22.3 million shares worth S$60 million in total changed hands.

The most actively traded counter was Ezion, which was flat at S$0.08 with 2.4 million shares changing hands. Other actives included CapitaLand with 1.83 million shares traded at S$3.20 apiece, up 0.95 per cent, and Singtel with 1.73 million shares changing hands at S$3.28, up by 0.61 per cent or S$0.02.

Among active index stocks, DBS Bank was up 0.73 per cent, or S$0.19, to S$26.29, while UOB was also up by 0.38 per cent, or S$0.10, to S$26.38.

Stocks fell on Thursday overnight across the major US indices, following a mixed round of earnings, with investors battering companies that posted disappointing results. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished down 0.5 per cent at 25,064.50, while the broad-based S&P 500 dropped 0.3 per cent to 2,804.49, and the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index fell 0.4 per cent to 7,825.30.

Meanwhile, Tokyo stocks opened lower on Friday, extending falls on Wall Street as the yen firmed against the US dollar after the US president's comments on the Fed's rate policy.

Mr Trump said the Federal Reserve's course of interest rate increases counteracted his efforts at growing the economy.

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