Singapore shares sank yesterday, tracking the Wall Street rout overnight amid fears in the United States of a second wave of the coronavirus, stalled stimulus talks and an increasingly contentious presidential election campaign.
Mr Stephen Innes, chief global market strategist at AxiCorp, said: "Fading prospects for US fiscal stimulus and the stepping up of mobility restrictions on concerns about the second wave of Covid-19 are smacking global stock markets again."
Soaring Covid-19 figures in some regions have fuelled concerns over the reimposition of movement restriction orders that will hurt economies further.
France, for instance, has ordered bars and restaurants in Marseille to shut and will restrict opening hours in other cities to contain the virus.
With service sectors already lagging behind manufacturing across most economies, those "divergencies are likely to persist" if the authorities continue to tighten social-mobility restrictions in response to rising Covid-19 cases, said Mr Innes.
The benchmark Straits Times Index (STI) fell 1.22 per cent, or 30.32 points, to 2,450.82.
Losers outnumbered gainers 281 to 135, after 1.33 billion securities worth $1.21 billion changed hands.
The Singapore Exchange (SGX) was the only counter on the blue-chip index that ended in the black. Shares of SGX gained 0.7 per cent, or six cents, to $9.04.
Singtel, on the other hand, failed to sustain Wednesday's gains and fell to the bottom of the table. The counter dropped 3.6 per cent to $2.12. It remained the most heavily traded STI stock with more than 35.9 million shares changing hands.
Other active counters included Genting Singapore, which fell 1.5 per cent to 67 cents, and ComfortDelGro, which shed 2.7 per cent to $1.42.
Also heavily traded was Wilmar International. Shares of the agri-food giant fell 0.5 per cent to $4.36. Wilmar said in a bourse filing yesterday that the proposed listing of its China unit is expected to raise 13.9 billion yuan (S$2.8 billion).
The STI's performance was in line with regional bourses that were spooked by Wall Street's sell-off.
Hong Kong, Shanghai and Tokyo were all down more than 1 per cent.
Seoul slipped 2.6 per cent. "Considering the sharp fall, there is little room for further decline, but volatility will likely remain high until the national holiday (at the end of the month)," Cape Investment & Securities analyst Han Ji-young said.
Bucking the trend was Malaysia's KLCI, which ended the day up 0.3 per cent.
