Daily Markets Briefing: STI down 0.26%

Expect a pullback today.

The Straits Times Index (STI) ended 7.94 points or 0.26% lower to 2993 on Thursday, taking the year-to-date performance to +3.83%.

The top active stocks were Global Logistic, which gained 3.98%, DBS, which gained 0.44%, Singtel, which closed unchanged, UOB, which closed unchanged and OCBC Bank, with a 0.54% fall.

According to OCBC, this came as U.S. stocks rebounded from a sharp morning selloff, but still closed lower, with the Nasdaq snapping a seven-day winning streak as investors paused before the start of earnings season and a lack of policy detail in President-elect Donald Trump’s first formal news conference a day ago.

Meanwhile, seven out of eleven S&P 500 industries ended lower, with Financials (-0.74%) leading the declines while Telecommunication Services (0.63%) led the gains.

"The weakness on Wall Street overnight could spark a similar correction in the local bourse today, potentially extending the pullback yesterday," OCBC said.

Here's more from OCBC:

The weakness on Wall Street overnight could spark a similar correction in the local bourse today, potentially extending the pullback yesterday.

On the upside, we peg the initial resistance at 3000, ahead of 3025. Again, the ability of the index to breach and sustain itself convincingly above 3000 is crucial. Failure which could see the STI slipping back to 2970.

While overall volume shrank 0.9% to 1.7b units traded, total value gained 3.0% to S$1.2b, and average value/unit rose 3.9% to S$0.69.

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