Singapore shares open lower on Monday; STI down 0.03%

SINGAPORE shares started the week slightly lower following a mixed and sleepy US trade session on Friday.

Singapore's Straits Times Index slipped 0.84 point or 0.03 per cent to 3,225.69 as at 9.06am on Monday.

However, gainers outnumbered losers 73 to 39, after 62.9 million securities worth S$29.4 million changed hands.

Rex International was the most traded counter by volume in the morning, rising S$0.01 or 5 per cent to S$0.21 after 8.8 million shares were traded.

Thomson Medical and Dyna-Mac continued to see heavy volumes after their shares surged on Friday afternoon. Thomson Medical traded up S$0.001 or 1.5 per cent to S$0.068 after six million shares changed hands, while Dyna-Mac was up S$0.005 or 2.9 per cent to S$0.176 with 4.1 million shares traded.

Index stock Singtel lost S$0.01 or 0.3 per cent to S$3.36 in early trade, following an announcement that it had teamed up with Grab Holdings to apply for a digital full bank licence in Singapore.

All three local banks were thinly traded but lost ground early on. DBS fell S$0.03 or 0.1 per cent to S$25.92, UOB traded down S$0.05 or 0.2 per cent to S$26.35 and OCBC declined S$0.01 or 0.1 per cent to S$10.95.

The US market had a sleepy trade session on Friday as the Dow Jones Industrial Average finished at a fresh record, up 0.1 per cent to 28,645.26.

However, the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index finished down 0.2 per cent at 9,006.62 and the broad-based S&P 500 ended essentially unchanged at 3,240.02.

In Europe, stocks wrapped up a holiday-thinned week at record highs as growing hopes that a Sino-US trade deal would be inked soon, as well as the latest dose of upbeat China data supported prospects of an improving global growth.

The pan-European Stoxx 600 index gained about 0.2 per cent.

Tokyo stocks opened lower on Monday with profit-taking leading the market ahead of the year-end and New Year holidays.

The benchmark Nikkei 225 index slipped 0.27 per cent or 63.17 points to 23,774.55 in early trade, while the broader Topix index was down 0.43 per cent or 7.45 points at 1,725.73.