Stocks to watch: Reits, property; Super offer now unconditional

ASIAN stocks will be trading on Thursday after an expected Fed rate hike.

Despite the hike, the path of rate hikes for the rest of the year was not as steep as feared, analysts said.

That is a positive for commodity-linked and equity-flow-driven emerging market currencies as the fear of a stronger dollar and higher US rates gets dispelled, said Citi Research. These include the Korean, Indian, Indonesian and Malaysian currencies, it said.

In Singapore, interest rate-sensitive real estate investment trusts (Reits) might see trading upon expectations of rate hikes being reset to three this year.

Property stocks remain in the limelight after the government surprised with a slight tweak to cooling measures last week.

Reiterating its "neutral" stance on the sector, Maybank Kim Eng Research said on Wednesday that demand from occupiers remains weak while high land prices drag on developer profitability.

"We believe the market should curb their enthusiasm on outperformers and switch to laggard, UOL, after the recent sector rally," the broker said.

Meanwhile, Super Group said on Thursday morning that its offer by Jacobs Douwe Egberts has turned unconditional in all respects, and the closing date for the offer has been extended to April 25. This means the takeover attempt will be proceeding as planned given that it has been accepted by more than half of existing shareholders.

Shares owned, controlled, or agreed to be acquired by the offeror and concert parties amounted to 56.09 per cent of the company's issued share capital as of March 15.