Thai Shares May Stop The Bleeding On Friday

(RTTNews) - The Thai stock market has tracked lower in four straight sessions, slipping almost 35 points or 2.5 percent along the way. The Stock Exchange of Thailand now sits just above the 1,460-point plateau although it may find traction on Friday.

The global forecast for the Asian markets is mixed to higher, likely driven by the latest earnings news. The European markets were up and the U.S. bourses were mixed and the Asian markets figure to split the difference.

The SET finished modestly lower on Thursday as losses from the consumer, finance, property, industrial, resource and service sectors were mitigated by support from the food and technology companies.

For the day, the index slumped 9.68 points or 0.66 percent to finish at 1,460.64 after trading between 1,458.67 and 1,476.58. Volume was 11.676 billion shares worth 54.423 billion baht. There were 281 decliners and 176 gainers, with 204 stocks finishing unchanged.

Among the actives, Thailand Airport lost 2.38 percent, while Asset World surrendered 2.69 percent, Banpu tumbled 2.36 percent, Bangkok Bank skidded 1.00 percent, Bangkok Dusit Medical weakened 1.74 percent, Bangkok Expressway was down 2.48 percent, B. Grimm plunged 3.42 percent, CP All Public slumped 2.65 percent, Charoen Pokphand Foods climbed 1.00 percent, Kasikornbank fell 0.34 percent, Krung Thai Bank advanced 0.97 percent, Krung Thai Card added 0.52 percent, PTT Oil & Retail dropped 3.11 percent, PTT sank 0.74 percent, PTT Exploration and Production dipped 0.40 percent, PTT Global Chemical plummeted 4.02 percent, SCG Packaging tanked 2.80 percent, Siam Commercial Bank collected 0.44 percent, Siam Concrete shed 0.48 percent, Thai Oil declined 1.60 percent, True Corporation stumbled 2.48 percent, TTB Bank retreated 1.11 percent and Advanced Info, Energy Absolute, Gulf and BTS Group were unchanged.

The lead from Wall Street is murky as the major averages opened mixed on Thursday and finished the same way.

The Dow dropped 140.59 points or 0.33 percent to finish at 42,374.36, while the NASDAQ climbed 138.83 points or 0.76 percent to close at 18,415.49 and the S&P 500 rose 12.44 points or 0.21 percent to end at 5,809.86.

The strength on the tech-heavy NASDAQ was spurred by strong quarterly earnings from the likes of Tesla (TSLA) and UPS (UPS).

On the other hand, the Dow was weighed by weak quarterly earnings news from IBM (IBM), Honeywell (HON) and Boeing (BA).

Oil prices fell on Thursday, extending losses from the previous session as concerns about excess supply and weak crude consumption in China weighed. West Texas Intermediate Crude oil futures for December ended down $0.58 or 0.8 percent at $70.19 a barrel.