Singapore stocks track Wall St gains on strong sentiment; STI up 0.2%

SINGAPORE – Gains among regional bourses after a modestly positive session on Wall Street overnight helped nudge local shares higher on March 26.

The more buoyant mood among investors left the Straits Times Index (STI) up 0.2 per cent or 9.18 points to 3,963.71, with gainers outnumbering losers 261 to 223 on trade of one billion securities worth $1.2 billion.

Wall Street set the tone with shares on the three key benchmarks edging higher on hopes that tariffs will not be as severe as earlier expected, although a slew of weaker-than-expected economic data weighed on Treasury yields and dialled up the risk of a slowdown.

The indexes swung between gains and losses all day before the S&P 500 closed 0.2 per cent ahead, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.1 per cent and the Nasdaq advanced 0.5 per cent.

Key regional bourses took the hint. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng gained 0.6 per cent, the Nikkei 225 in Japan was up 0.7 per cent, South Korea’s Kospi rose 1.1 per cent and Malaysian shares advanced 0.3 per cent.

The Australian market rose for a fifth day running, adding 0.7 per cent, in part due to federal government budget support for hard-pressed consumers.

Meanwhile, the STI’s top gainer was ST Engineering, up 1.7 per cent to $6.67, but Singapore Exchange occupied the other end of the spectrum, falling 1.4 per cent to $13.15.

The local banks were mixed. DBS was up 0.7 per cent at $46.39 and OCBC gained 0.4 per cent to $17.25, but UOB fell 0.1 per cent to $37.85.

New data showed that Singapore’s manufacturing output fell 1.3 per cent year on year in February, breaking its seven-month run of expansion after the biomedical and electronics clusters fell into contraction.

Economists expect that manufacturers could turn more cautious, given a broadening trade war and uncertainties over US tariffs, although they do not believe that Singapore will be directly affected. THE BUSINESS TIMES