Singapore shares buck trend of Asian peers as STI closes 0.3% lower
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Asian indexes were buoyed by optimism surrounding China’s reopening.
PHOTO: ST FILE
Tay Peck Gek
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SINGAPORE - Singapore stocks started the week in the red, with the Straits Times Index (STI) closing 0.3 per cent or 10.15 points lower at 3,283.60 points on Monday. The STI bucked the trend among its Asian peers, which were buoyed by optimism surrounding China’s reopening.
Across the broader Singapore market, decliners beat gainers 295 to 248, on a turnover of 851.4 million securities with a total value of $991.4 million.
ComfortDelGro shares sank to a 52-week low at $1.14, down three cents or 2.6 per cent. The counter exited the STI last September, and has been on a downtrend, declining drastically since last week.
It was among the stocks that topped net institutional outflow for the five sessions from Jan 6 to Jan 12.
RHB lowered the transport heavyweight’s target price from $1.80 to $1.65, as a result of reduced earnings expectations for taxi and public transport operations.
iFast shares tanked 8.5 per cent or 50 cents to $5.36, despite the company maintaining its financial guidance for financial year (FY) 2023 to FY2025 over the weekend. The Singapore fintech platform operator is a subcontractor helping to build the Hong Kong ePension platform, the rollout of which has fallen behind schedule.
The banking trio ended the day mixed. UOB dropped 2.9 per cent to $29.66, making it the top STI decliner. DBS Bank and OCBC Bank rose 0.1 per cent and 0.08 per cent respectively to $34.87 and $12.65, after mixed bank earnings on Wall Street were reported last Friday.
Markets may see another downshift in the US Federal Reserve’s pace of rate hikes in February as the latest inflation print shows that “we are certainly on the right path”, according to TS Lombard’s senior global macro strategist Skylar Montgomery Koning.
TS Lombard does not expect the Fed’s terminal rates to reach very high levels and actually sees an increasing risk that the central bank fails to defeat inflation, she said on Bloomberg Television.
Elsewhere in markets, iron ore tumbled after China pledged to tighten supervision on pricing after the metal’s surge in recent months. Oil and gold slid. THE BUSINESS TIMES
