The Singapore bourse determinedly kicked off February on a cheerful note as selling pressure, evident in the past two days, eased up.
Furthermore, a slew of macro data out of the region, though somewhat mixed, and strong payrolls data in the US provided no reason to alter the rosy economic picture.
With Wall Street snapping out of a two-day sell-off overnight, it seemed an opportune time for traders to buy on dips and push the key Straits Times Index up to finish at 3,547.23 - up 13.24 points or 0.4 per cent.
Other Asian bourses had a mixed showing, with gains in Japan's Nikkei 225, South Korea's Kospi and Australia's ASX 200, and losses in Hong Kong's Hang Seng, China's Shanghai Composite and Malaysia's FBM KLCI.
Traders will be looking out for earnings to be released by tech giants during the US session, namely Apple, Google parent Alphabet, Amazon.com and Alibaba, as well as manufacturing and construction spending out of the US.
Yesterday, private business survey Caixin indicated that China's factory recovery continued in January. South Korea, Indonesia and Thailand saw inflation rates ease last month while Hong Kong exhibited solid retail sales in December.
United States Fed chair Janet Yellen issued a final policy statement that further indicated that US rates will keep rising.
CMC Markets' Margaret Yang Yan expects investors to buy on dips.
There are results from bigwigs to look to; for instance SIA, DBS Bank and SingTel are due to report quarterly earnings by the end of next week.
DBS and UOB led gains in the local bourse, rising 0.8 per cent and 1.5 per cent to $26.61 and $27.85 respectively. OCBC closed unchanged at $12.93.
OCBC Investment Research pointed out that Singapore banks are trading at 1.4 times historical book - below Asian banks' average of 1.6 times book - following a re-rating of Asian banks. Prior to this, the local banks were trading as low as less than 1x historical book in 2016, given concerns over their exposure to the oil and gas sector.
Turnover in the local bourse came in at 2.8 billion shares worth $1.7 billion versus Wednesday's 2.3 billion shares worth $1.9 billion. Some 222 counters were up and 219 down.
Genting Hong Kong fell 0.5 US cent to 22 US cent as it warned it expects another net loss for the year.
OUE Commercial Reit rose 0.5 cent to 75.5 cents. For the last quarter of 2017, the Reit reported a dip in distribution per unit to 1.14 cents from 1.18 cents, which OCBC Investment Research said was generally in line with expectations.
