Singapore Shares Likely To Remain Rangebound

(RTTNews) - Ahead of Monday's holiday for Eid-al-Adha, the Singapore stock market had turned lower again - one day after ending the four-day slide in which it had slumped almost 25 points or 0.7 percent. The Straits Time Index now rests just shy of the 3,300-point plateau, although it's expected to open in the green again on Tuesday.

The global forecast for the Asian markets is generally positive on optimism over the outlook for interest rates. The European markets were mixed and the U.S. bourses were up and the Asian markets figure to follow the latter lead.

The STI finished modestly lower on Friday following losses from the financial shares, property stocks and industrial issues.

For the day, the index dropped 26.98 points or 0.81 percent to finish at the daily low of 3,297.55 after peaking at 3,323.90.

Among the actives, Seatrium skyrocketed 1,900.00 percent, while Yangzijiang Financial plummeted 2.82 percent, Venture Corporation plunged 1.63 percent, Hongkong Land tanked 1.53 percent, Keppel tumbled 1.51 percent, Conformt DelGro rallied 1.49 percent, Singapore Technologies Engineering surrendered 1.49 percent, Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation and City Development both stumbled 1.12 percent, Keppel CD REIT slumped 1.10 percent, DBS Group retreated 1.00 percent, Mapletree Industrial Trust declined 0.92 percent, Mapletree Pan Asia Commercial Trust skidded 0.81 percent, CapitaLand Ascendas REIT dropped 0.77 percent, Mapletree Logistics Trust sank 0.75 percent, Genting Singapore shed 0.57 percent, CapitaLand Integrated Commercial Trust lost 0.51 percent, SembCorp Industries added 0.40 percent, SingTel fell 0.39 percent, CapitaLand Investment and UOL Group both slid 0.38 percent, SATS rose 0.34 percent, Wilmar eased 0.32 percent and Thai Beverage, Yangzijiang Shipbuilding and Emperador were unchanged.

The lead from Wall Street is upbeat as the major averages opened lower on Monday but quickly turned higher and finished solidly in the green.

The Dow jumped 188.94 points or 0.49 percent to finish at 38,778.10, while the NASDAQ rallied 168.14 points or 0.95 percent to close at 17,857.02 and the S&P 500 gained 41.63 points or 0.77 percent to end at 5,473.23.

The buying interest that emerged on Wall Street came as the markets benefitted from the positive sentiment generated last week by tamer-than-expected inflation data.

While Federal Reserve officials forecast just one interest rate cut this year following last Wednesday's monetary policy meeting, traders remain hopeful the predictions will turn out to be overly conservative if inflation continues to slow in the coming months.

On the U.S. economic front, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York released a report this morning showing New York manufacturing activity contracted at a notably slower rate in June.

Oil prices rose to a fresh six-week high on Monday on hopes about the outlook for energy demand. West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures for July ended higher by $1.88 or about 1.25 percent at $80.33 a barrel, the highest settlement since April 29.