STI up 1.4% after midday break on positive market developments

SINGAPORE stocks seemed to have been lifted by positive market sentiment in the US as the Straits Times Index tracked Wall Street gains to rise by 1.4 per cent or 42.28 points to 3,093.39 as at 1.05pm.

UOB Kay Hian analyst Adrian Loh said the welcome news of a potentially viable antiviral drug against Covid-19 from Merck, as well as favourable news from both Singtel and ST Engineering could have contributed to positive sentiment this morning.

Pharmaceutical giant Merck and its partner Ridgeback Biotherapeutics announced that the clinical trial of their oral antiviral drug showed about a 50 per cent reduction in the risk of Covid-19-related deaths and hospitalisations.

Meanwhile, Singtel shares climbed 1.7 per cent or S$0.04 to S$2.47, while ST Engineering was up 2.1 per cent or S$0.08 to S$3.86 as at 1.03pm.

Singtel had earlier announced on Friday that it had sold its Australian tower assets for A$1.9 billion (S$1.46 billion), while ST Engineering had announced the purchase of two US transport solutions firms, TransCore Partners and TLP Holdings for US$2.68 billion.

Overall, gainers beat decliners 230 to 187 on the Singapore bourse, with some 888.9 million securities worth S$678.1 million changing hands as at 1.05pm.

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The trio of banks rose in tandem with the rest of the market. DBS gained 1.3 per cent or S$0.40 to S$30.37, while OCBC was up 1.9 per cent or S$0.21 to S$11.58 and UOB rose 1.4 per cent or S$0.35 at S$25.98 as at 1.03pm.

Other active securities included Genting Singapore, which gained 3.5 per cent or S$0.025 to S$0.735 and Capitaland Integrated Commercial Trust, which gained 2 per cent or S$0.04 to S$2.06 as at 1.31pm.

In the US, the benchmark Dow Jones Industrial Average finished 1.4 per cent higher at 34,326.46, while the broad-based S&P 500 gained 1.2 per cent to hit 4,357.04 last Friday. The tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index climbed 0.8 per cent to 14,566.70.

Still, Singapore Exchange market strategist Geoff Howie said that while the local market could be tracking US gains, with S&P futures currently up as much as 1.6 per cent since last Friday, Asian markets have been weighed down by their own domestic factors.

As at 1.28pm, the Hang Seng Index is down 2 per cent or 328.44 points to 24,095.32 while the Nikkei 225 index fell 1.1 per cent or 328.44 points to 28,442.63 as at 1.25pm.