Singapore stocks close higher on Jan 23 as inflation eases; STI up 0.7%
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Investors here cheered news that full-year inflation came in at 2.4 per cent in 2024.
PHOTO: ST FILE
Ranamita Chakraborty & Romaine Chan
SINGAPORE – A tech rally on Wall Street overnight and encouraging inflation figures in Singapore helped local shares close the day’s trading in positive territory on Jan 23.
Investors here cheered news that full-year inflation came in at 2.4 per cent in 2024, which was near the official forecast and significantly lower than 2023 levels.
Wall Street did its bit for confidence as well, with buoyant Netflix subscriber numbers and President Donald Trump’s big-spending enthusiasm over artificial intelligence sending the tech-heavy Nasdaq surging 1.3 per cent while the S&P 500 added 0.6 per cent and the Dow industrials rose 0.3 per cent.
Good news on those two fronts left the benchmark Straits Times Index (STI) with nowhere to go but up, with the index adding 0.7 per cent or 25.36 points to 3,806.57. In the broader market, gainers outnumbered losers 262 to 237 on trade of 933.4 million securities worth $1 billion.
The STI’s biggest winner was the Singapore Exchange, which advanced 3.7 per cent to $12.45, while Seatrium led the laggards, down 1.3 per cent to close at $2.22. The most active counters included Yangzijiang Financial, which rose 3.5 per cent to 44.5 cents after 28.8 million shares changed hands.
All three banks ended the day in the black. DBS rose 1.1 per cent to $43.81, UOB was up 0.9 per cent to $37.35 and OCBC gained 0.4 per cent to $17.09.
Elsewhere, key indexes were mostly in the red. South Korea’s Kospi fell 1.2 per cent, Malaysian shares slipped 0.7 per cent and the ASX 200 in Sydney recorded its first drop in three days, slipping 0.6 per cent after scaling seven-week highs earlier in the week.
Chinese stocks posted a mixed performance after six government agencies, including the central bank and the securities regulator, released a slew of measures to guide medium and long-term funds into the capital market.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was down 0.4 per cent while the Shanghai Composite rose 0.5 per cent. THE BUSINESS TIMES
