Correspondent
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SINGAPORE stocks ended the week higher after early gains attracted a flood of liquidity back into the equity market. This was despite investor sentiment staying volatile yesterday - a mixture of hope and caution.
After fluctuating between gains and losses throughout the morning and early afternoon, the Straits Times Index rose sharply to finish 29.94 points or 1.2 per cent higher at 2,430.96, the highest closing level since Sept 25 last year. For the week, the index was up 5.3 per cent, after four straight days of gains since Tuesday.
Property firms and banks were the main stocks pushing the STI higher yesterday. Developer CapitaLand, the biggest index mover, ended 3 per cent higher at $3.73, while rival City Developments ended 4.5 per cent higher at $9.38. Among the banks, DBS Group rose 1.5 per cent to $12.40, United Overseas Bank gained 1.7 per cent to finish at $15.38, and OCBC Bank ended 0.6 per cent higher at $7.03.
Most other STI members also contributed to the rise in the index. Of its 30 component stocks, 26 rose while three fell and one ended unchanged.
The biggest percentage gainers among the blue chips were shipping group Neptune Orient Lines, which rose 6.3 per cent to $1.68, and palm oil group Golden Agri-Resources, which finished 6.1 per cent higher at 35 cents.
The main laggard among the index members was property group Hongkong Land, which slid 0.8 per cent to US$3.62.
In the overall market, gainers outnumbered losers 290-89, with 485 counters unchanged, excluding warrants and bonds, whose prices sometimes move in the opposite direction of a company's share price.
The FTSE ST All-Share index that tracks 263 of the most liquid stocks listed here rose 1.3 per cent, with roughly five of its member stocks rising for every one that fell. All 13 FTSE ST industry sector indices ended higher.
The FTSE ST Catalist Index that tracks 35 stocks listed on the second board rose 2.6 per cent.
OSIM International, which makes massage chairs and other healthy lifestyle equipment, was queried by the Singapore Exchange just before the lunchtime trading break, after its share price rose sharply. OSIM, which is due to report second-quarter earnings on Wednesday, replied that it was unaware of any particular reason for the price jump. Its shares ended 15.6 per cent higher at 52 cents each.
Overall trading volume yesterday was lower than on Thursday, but still higher than at the start of the week. Some 1.63 billion units worth $1.42 billion changed hands, compared with a volume of 1.97 billion units worth $1.81 billion on Thursday, excluding shares traded in foreign currencies.
The most heavily traded counter was Midas Holdings, a maker of aluminium alloy parts for railway projects in China. It said on Thursday night that it had raised some $90 million from a private placement of 120 million new shares at 75.5 cents each, to expand its business. Midas fell 0.6 per cent to 81.5 cents, with 178.7 million shares changing hands.
Telco MobileOne (M1) rose 1.9 per cent to end at $1.64, a day after it said that its second-quarter net profit fell 9.7 per cent from a year earlier to $37.1 million on lower operating revenue. DBS Vickers analyst Sachin Mittal, who has a 'buy' rating on the stock, said in a report that M1's earnings for the first half of the year had exceeded expectations and that the mobile phone operator had managed to arrest the decline in its market share without hurting its margins.
Elsewhere in Asia, most other major equity benchmarks rose. Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index gained 2.4 per cent to 18,805.66, while Japan's Nikkei-225 index ended 0.5 per cent higher at 9,395.32.
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