SINGAPORE shares began Tuesday (Jan 14) trading in negative territory as overseas markets closed mixed.
As at 9.01 am, the Straits Times Index (STI) was down 0.1 per cent or 3.64 points at 3,788.06. Across the broader market, gainers outnumbered losers 64 to 40 after 40.5 million securities worth S$80.9 million changed hands.
Seafood supplier Oceanus was the most actively traded counter by volume. It was trading flat at S$0.006 with 3.4 million securities transacted.
Other actively traded counters included maritime vessel maker Yangzijiang Shipbuilding which rose two per cent or S$0.06 to S$3.01 and logistics provider GKE Corporation which fell 8.7 per cent or S$0.009 to S$0.095.
First Real Estate Investment Trust was also trading up 5.9 per cent or S$0.015 at S$0.27, with 1.6 million shares changing hands. This follows the Reit’s announcement on Monday that it received a preliminary non-binding letter of intent from Siloam International Hospitals to acquire its portfolio of hospital assets in Indonesia.
Before the market opened, beleaguered cord-blood bank Cordlife requested a trading halt after closing flat at S$0.145 on Monday, the day on which it was due for a license renewal.
From Sep 15, 2024, to Jan 13, 2025, the Ministry of Health had barred Cordlife from collecting, testing, processing and/or storing more than 30 units of new cord blood each month. This was to safeguard customers’ interests while it monitored the cord-blood bank’s operational stability.
The trio of banking stocks were trading down at open. UOB fell 0.2 per cent or S$0.07 to S$36.73. OCBC declined 0.1 per cent or S$0.02 to S$16.95 and DBS retreated 0.5 per cent or S$0.21 to S$43.86.
Wall Street stocks closed mostly higher on Monday as two of the three major indices finished in positive territory alongside a rise in Treasury bond yields and changing monetary policy expectations.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced 0.9 per cent to 42,297.12 and the broad-based S&P 500 rose 0.2 per cent to 5,836.22, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite declined 0.4 per cent to 19,088.10.
European shares hit a one-week low as equities fell under pressure with a market sell-off following US jobs data, which drove expectations for a more cautious Federal Reserve approach to interest rate cuts this year. The pan-European Stoxx 600 Index retreated 0.6 per cent to 508.68
