Singapore stocks finish mixed in low volume

A largely nondescript Tuesday ended with stocks mixed. An early bout of selling of the banks brought on by an overnight dip on Wall Street depressed the Straits Times Index to an intraday low of 3,278, though a positive session for the Dow futures was possibly the motivation for afternoon short-covering that lifted the index to 3,288.95 at the close, thus trimming its loss to just 2.61 points for the day.

News reports said that Monday's session in the US saw only 4.6 billion shares traded, the lowest one-day total this year because the US bond market was closed for Columbus Day.

The local market probably was not that far off in terms of volume done - 1.5 billion units worth S$960.1 million was best described as uninspiring. Excluding warrants, there were 246 rises versus 184 falls so trading was overall more mixed than weak. Needless to say, brokers had few positive or flattering descriptions to offer for the current state of the market.