Singapore stocks slide at Thursday's open; STI down 1.3%

SINGAPORE shares opened sharply lower on Thursday, following Wall Street's sell-off overnight.

The Straits Times Index (STI) shed 39.09 points or 1.3 per cent to 2,919.54 as at 9am.

Losers outnumbered gainers 165 to 22 after 126.84 million securities worth S$50.5 million changed hands.

Artivision Tech was the most active counter in early trade. Its shares edged up 0.1 Singapore cent or 8.3 per cent to 1.3 cents, with more than 34 million shares worth S$440,000 changing hands.

Singtel slipped S$0.03 or 1.3 per cent to S$2.37 as at 9am. This comes after Moody's Investors Service restored the telco's ratings back to "stable" after nearly two years.

Meanwhile, Aspen fell 0.5 Singapore cent or 1.9 per cent to 26 cents, following an announcement that the group is now mainboard-listed.

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The trio of local lenders were all lower in early trade. DBS fell S$0.29 or 1.1 per cent to S$25.52, UOB lost S$0.39 or 1.7 per cent to S$23.25, while OCBC declined S$0.18 or 1.7 per cent to S$10.37.

Over in the US, stocks ended Wednesday's session sharply lower amid worries over excessive equity valuations, as well as the Federal Reserve's cautious economic outlook due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished 2.1 per cent lower at 30,303.17, the broad-based S&P 500 fell 2.6 per cent to 3,750.77, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index tumbled 2.6 per cent to 13,270.60.

European stocks also ended firmly in the red on Wednesday as extended coronavirus lockdowns led the German government to slash its growth forecast for 2021. Talk of further interest rate cuts by the European Central Bank also hit the country's banking stocks hard. The pan-European Stoxx 600 closed 1.2 per cent lower, the biggest single-day percentage fall in over five weeks.

Elsewhere in Asia, Tokyo stocks opened sharply lower on Thursday as investor confidence was hurt by Wall Street's broad sell-off. The benchmark Nikkei 225 index was down 2.3 per cent or 654.16 points at 27,981.05 in early trade, while the broader Topix index lost 2.1 per cent or 39.17 points to 1,820.90.