Daily Markets Briefing: STI up 0.65%

Investors are urged to take caution today.

The Straits Times Index (STI) ended 22.73 points or 0.65% higher to 3512.18, taking the year-to-date performance to +3.21%.

The top active stocks today were DBS, which gained 0.49%, CapitaLand, which gained 1.92%, UOB, which gained 1.26%, OCBC Bank, which gained 0.31% and Singtel, with a 0.83% advance.

The FTSE ST Mid Cap Index gained 0.08%, whilst the FTSE ST Small Cap Index rose 0.21%.

According to OCBC Investment Research, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq closed at records on Monday as gains in energy and industrials helped the benchmarks finish in positive territory in the first five sessions of 2018 on optimism over a stronger economy and looming fiscal stimulus.

Nine out of 11 S&P 500 industries finished higher. The best performers were Utilities, which rose 0.94%, and Real Estate, which rose 0.59%, whilst Health Care, which fell 0.38%, and Financials, which fell 0.13%, lost ground.

"Local sentiment could remain positive today, but we expect the STI’s gains to be limited especially after the strong performances over the past sessions," OCBC said.

Reaching the people who run Asia's businesses is harder than it used to be.

Inboxes are crowded. Attention is short. The executives you most want to reach — the founders, CFOs, and operators who actually move budgets — are the hardest to find through the usual channels. If you're building a company, a category, or a reputation, you already know this.

We've spent twenty years building the room they read. Singapore Business Review is where senior decision makers in Singapore and across Southeast Asia come for business coverage they can't get elsewhere — in print, online, and in person at the summits and roundtables we host across seven markets.

If you have something these readers should know about — a point of view worth publishing, a product worth their attention, an event worth their time — we'd like to hear what you're trying to do.

Book a meeting

| Or download the media kit (PDF)

240,000 senior readers quarterly in print Top 1,700 Singapore companies reached

7 markets across Southeast Asia