Singapore shares open higher on Friday; STI up 0.1%

SINGAPORE shares started trading in positive territory on Friday (Oct 18), mirroring overnight gains in the Europe market.

As at 9.01 am, the Straits Times Index (STI) was 0.1 per cent or 3.07 points higher at 3,628.32. Across the broader market, gainers outnumbered losers 53 to 51, with 41.6 million securities worth S$55.3 million having changed hands.

One of the most actively traded counters by volume was palm-oil company Golden-Agri Resources, which gained 1.8 per cent or S$0.005 to S$0.285, with three million shares changing hands.

Shares of Genting Singapore were also briskly traded, falling 1.2 per cent or S$0.01 to S$0.84.

Wee Hur shares gained 8.5 per cent or S$0.035 to S$0.445. This follows the construction engineering company’s clarification on Thursday night that a A$1.6 billion (S$1.4 billion) student accommodation transaction was not a done deal.

Banking stocks were trading up at the open. DBS rose 0.3 per cent or S$0.13 to S$39.65. UOB climbed 0.7 per cent or S$0.23 to S$32.74. OCBC was up 0.5 per cent or S$0.07 at S$15.33.

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Wall Street ended Thursday mixed amid renewed interest in chipmakers and designers such as Nvidia.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.4 per cent to end at a new record of 43,239.05, while the broad-based S&P 500 Index lost about 0.02 per cent to close at 5,841.47.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index rose around 0.04 per cent to close at 18,373.61. This comes as chip-design titan Nvidia’s share price rose 0.9 per cent, and shares of chipmaker TSMC gained 9.8 per cent on the back of strong third-quarter results.

In Europe, stocks closed higher after the European Central Bank delivered a widely anticipated 25 basis point rate cut. The continent-wide Stoxx 600 index ended 0.8 per cent higher at 523.91 points.