SINGAPORE shares opened higher on Friday (Dec 30) following a positive session in the US market the day before, after US jobless data showed signs of economic cooling.
The benchmark Straits Times Index (STI) rose 10.62 points to 3,259.86 points, a gain of 0.3 per cent. As at 9.02 am, 30.4 million shares worth S$29.7 million changed hands, while winners outnumbered losers 90 to 27.
Sembcorp Marine (Sembmarine), ESR Logos Reit and Eneco Energy were among the top most heavily traded securities when the market opened.
Both Sembmarine : S51 0% and ESR Logos Reit : J91U +1.35% opened flat at the price of S$0.139 and S$0.37 respectively. The former saw 2.2 million shares changing hands, while the latter had 1.2 million shares traded at 9 am.
Eneco Energy : R14 -9.09%, which is on the Singapore Exchange’s watch list, slipped 9.1 per cent or S$0.001 to S$0.01 in the morning after one million shares changed hands.
Genting Singapore : G13 +0.53% was the top traded security by volume among index counters. It opened flat at S$0.95, while 618,700 shares were traded.
The trio of local banks opened higher on Friday. DBS : D05 -0.32% rose S$0.14, or 0.4 per cent, to S$34.07; UOB : U11 -0.23% gained S$0.06, or 0.2 per cent, to S$30.86; OCBC : O39 -0.16% was up S$0.04, or 0.3 per cent, to S$12.26 as at 9.01 am.
On Wall Street, stocks closed higher on Thursday as investors digested higher-than-anticipated jobless claims data, suggesting the world’s biggest economy could be cooling.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 1.1 per cent up at 33,220.80.
The broad-based S&P 500 jumped 1.8 per cent to 3,849.28, and the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index rose 2.6 per cent to 10,478.09.
Buoyed by US jobless data which eased concerns about the Federal Reserve’s aggressive tightening cycle, European stocks also closed up on Thursday, led by technology gains.
The region-wide Stoxx 600 rose 0.7 per cent.
(Source : BUSINESS TIMES) , all rights reserved by original source.
