STI brushes off Wall Street losses to climb 0.53%

Singapore shares paid little heed to Wall Street's overnight losses and gained ground yesterday, recouping much of the previous day's losses sparked by rate hike jitters.

The key Straits Times Index rose 0.53 per cent to finish at 3,239.33 against the backdrop of a mixed showing by regional peers. Major equity gauges in Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Australia and Malaysia advanced while China and Hong Kong retreated.

Trading sentiments remain weak as worries persist over the health of the global economy amid soaring inflation, rising rates and slowing economic activity.

JP Morgan Asset Management's chief market strategist for Asia-Pacific, Mr Tai Hui, said: "Our view of staying more focused on portfolio resilience, with a preference for fixed income, remains unchanged. For equities, we expect more downgrades in earnings for coming months, and focus on quality companies which can deliver more consistent earnings performance over weaker growth would be preferred."

Some 1.73 billion units worth $1.02 billion were traded on the Singapore bourse. Gainers outpaced losers with 269 counters closing up and 194, down.

Hatten Land released an encouraging set of results on Monday and was one of the day's top 5 active counters with 32 million shares done. The property developer swung into the black in the fourth quarter due to higher revenue and lower operating expenses, among others. The Catalist counter rose 16.13 per cent to 3.6 cents.

Marco Polo Marine was the day's most active with 296 million shares traded. The stock drew some optimism after RHB Research deemed that the marine logistics group was at an "inflection point" based on recently released third-quarter results and rising charter rates. The research house also raised the counter's target price to 5 cents from 4 cents. It finished at 4.5 cents, up 21.62 per cent yesterday.