STI closes on a jubilant note, up 1.4% amid regional rally

SINGAPORE – As Santa rallies go, this one is shaping up to be a cracker with some key regional markets following Wall Street’s lead overnight to record bumper gains on Dec 28.

With just one day left in the trading year, local investors are especially confident that 2023 will end on a resounding high note, given the Singapore market’s latest heroics.

The benchmark Straits Times Index (STI) surged 1.38 per cent or 43.64 points to 3,214.4 with gainers thumping losers 403 to 216 on robust trade of 1.2 billion shares worth $1.3 billion.

Most indexes in the region rose, as traders took to year-end bargain hunting, no doubt fired up by Wall Street’s heady performance amid a growing belief that US interest rate cuts are on the cards for 2024.

The S&P 500 closed just shy of an all-time high overnight while the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average racked up its sixth record high this month.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng soared 2.5 per cent and South Korea’s Kospi rose 1.6 per cent. Bursa Malaysia could only manage a 0.2 per cent gain while the Nikkei 225 in Tokyo shed 0.4 per cent. Australian shares added 0.70 per cent and are now just 14 points shy of a record high.

At home, DBS Bank was the top gainer, up 2.2 per cent to $33.04. The other two lenders were among the biggest advancers – UOB rose 1.7 per cent to $28.38, and OCBC Bank added 1.1 per cent to $12.92.

Creative Technology was the biggest loser, falling 4.7 per cent to $1.42. Seatrium, The Place Holdings and Genting Singapore were the top traded counters by volume.

Singapore Exchange market strategist Geoff Howie noted that from for the last quarter of the year up to mid-December, the STI had been lagging behind the FTSE Asia Pacific Index, with its underperformance “possibly stretched to a point that has attracted relative value traders”.

THE BUSINESS TIMES