STI closes flat amid a mixed regional showing, overnight Wall Street declines
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The focus will now be on how tariffs have affected the US retail sector, with big guns, including Target, reporting results in coming days.
ST PHOTO: LIM YAOHUI
Tay Peck Gek
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SINGAPORE – Profit-taking and downbeat signals from Wall Street overnight combined to leave the local market largely unchanged on May 21.
The rather cautious trading nudged the Straits Times Index (STI) up just 0.05 point or 0 per cent to 3,882.55, with gainers ahead of losers 273 to 205 in the broader market on modest trade of 982.2 million securities valued at $1.2 billion.
An equally middling session on Wall Street set the lacklustre tone for the day.
Hits to tech shares snapped a six-day winning run for the S&P 500, which fell 0.4 per cent.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.3 per cent while the tech-focused Nasdaq fell 0.4 per cent.
Only Tesla of the “Magnificent Seven” tech stocks posted a gain. Alphabet and Amazon both declined around 1 per cent and Apple and Nvidia each slipped about 0.9 per cent.
The focus will now be on how tariffs have affected the US retail sector, with big guns, including Target, reporting results in coming days.
Regional indexes were mixed. Malaysian shares dipped 0.3 per cent, Japan’s Nikkei 225 was off 0.6 per cent, while the Kospi in Seoul shot up 0.9 per cent and the Hang Seng in Hong Kong advanced 0.62 per cent.
The ASX 200 in Australia added 0.5 per cent after earlier hitting a three-month high on the back of another rate cut, with more on the cards, given surprisingly dovish comments from the Reserve Bank.
Meanwhile, SIA Engineering surged 4.5 per cent to a 52-week high of $2.55, a day after announcing a $1.3 billion agreement to provide services for Singapore Airlines and the low-cost carrier Scoot.
Developer Bukit Sembawang hit a 52-week high as well, up 3.2 per cent to $3.89, but there were no announcements that could have explained the share price performance.
The banking trio had a mixed showing.
DBS fell 0.6 per cent to $44.13, while OCBC was unchanged at $16.21, as was UOB, which closed at $35.40. THE BUSINESS TIMES
