STI slips 0.3%, tracking lacklustre showing at most regional bourses

SINGAPORE – A muted performance on Wall Street overnight condemned most regional markets to end the week on a downbeat note on Nov 17.

Singapore’s blue-chip barometer mirrored the low-key mood, slipping 8.38 points or 0.3 per cent to end at 3,124.67, although it managed to eke out a slim gain of 0.6 per cent for the week.

Losers pipped gainers 310 to 294 on trade of 928.4 million securities worth $676.1 million.

It was mixed elsewhere: The Nikkei in Tokyo rose 0.48 per cent, the Hang Seng in Hong Kong fell 2 per cent, Seoul’s Kospi dipped 0.7 per cent, and the ASX in Sydney slid a marginal 0.13 per cent.

There wasn’t much of a lead from Wall Street, where lacklustre corporate results left the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 0.1 per cent, but the S&P 500 added 0.1 per cent and the tech-heavy Nasdaq ended flat but was still up almost 10 per cent in November.

Mr Vishnu Varathan, Mizuho Bank’s head of economics and strategy, attributed Wall Street’s sluggish showing to a loss of confidence about a sufficiently soft landing and a corresponding slip in United States Treasury yields. These chipped away at a propensity for equity gains.

Mr Varathan cited Walmart’s warnings of “deflation” from softened pricing power to say that emerging consumer fragilities amid tightening credit may also be lifting the veneer of overdone “soft landing” confidence.

Jardine’s Straits Times Index constituents were mostly in the red, led by Jardine Matheson Holdings, which slid 3.4 per cent to US$39.80. Hongkong Land was 2.7 per cent lower at US$3.29 while DFI Retail Group dipped 2.1 per cent to US$2.30.

Singtel lost 2.1 per cent to $2.33 after it clarified that the Optus network outage in Australia was not caused by an upgrade of the Singtel Internet Exchange, STiX.

The telco was correcting reports indicating that “changes to routing information” from STiX led to the 14-hour-long Optus meltdown last week. THE BUSINESS TIMES