Singapore Shares May Open Under Water On Monday

(RTTNews) - The Singapore stock market on Friday snapped the three-day winning streak in which it had climbed almost 90 points or 2 percent. The Straits Times Index now sits just beneath the 4,550-point plateau and it's looking at another soft start again on Monday.

The global forecast for the Asian markets is soft on concerns over the outlook for interest rates. The European markets were down and the U.S. bourses were mixed and flat and the Asian markets figure to split the difference.

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

For the day, the index lost 29.84 points or 0.65 percent to finish at 4,546.07 after trading between 4,522.23 and 4,560.49.

Among the actives, CapitaLand Ascendas REIT retreated 1.06 percent, while CapitaLand Integrated Commercial Trust sank 0.85 percent, CapitaLand Investment tanked 1.84 percent, City Developments and SembCorp Industries both tumbled 1.08 percent, Comfort DelGro slipped 0.68 percent, DBS Group was down 0.41 percent, Hongkong Land slumped 0.94 percent, Keppel DC REIT shed 0.84 percent, Keppel Ltd stumbled 1.57 percent, Mapletree Pan Asia Commercial Trust surrendered 1.36 percent, Mapletree Logistics Trust lost 0.77 percent, Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation fell 0.75 percent, SATS plummeted 2.25 percent, Seatrium Limited contracted 0.92 percent, Singapore Technologies Engineering plunged 2.19 percent, SingTel added 0.62 percent, Thai Beverage climbed 1.06 percent, United Overseas Bank eased 0.29 percent, UOL Group slid 0.34 percent, Wilmar International skidded 0.89 percent, Yangzijiang Financial declined 0.96 percent, Yangzijiang Shipbuilding dropped 0.86 percent and DFI Retail Group, Genting Singapore and Mapletree Industrial Trust were unchanged.

The lead from Wall Street is murky as the major averages opened lower on Friday but hugged the line for most of the day before ending mixed and little changed.

The Dow shed 309.74 points or 0.65 percent to finish t 47,147.48, while the NASDAQ rose 30.23 points or 0.13 percent to close at 22,900.59 and the S&P 500 dipped 3.38 points or 0.05 percent to end at 6,734.11. For the week, the NASDAQ dipped 0.5 percent, the Dow rose 0.3 percent and the S&P perked 0.1 percent.

Weakness among technology stocks continued to weigh on Wall Street early in the session amid lingering valuation concerns. However, gains from tech heavyweights Nvidia (NVDA), Palantir Technologies (PLTR) and Tesla (TSLA) dragged the NASDAQ into the green.

While some traders used the initial slump as an opportunity to pick up stocks at reduced levels, buying interest remained somewhat subdued amid uncertainty about the outlook for interest rates.

Recent comments from Federal Reserve officials and indications that key U.S. economic data may never be released due to the government shutdown have reduced confidence that the central bank will lower interest rates next month.

Crude oil prices rallied on Friday after a Ukrainian drone attack damaged an oil depot in the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk. West Texas Intermediate crude for December delivery was up $1.28 or 2.2 percent at $59.97 a barrel.

Closer to home, Singapore will provide October figures for non-oil domestic exports later today; in September, NODX were up 13.0 percent on month and 6.9 percent on year for a trade surplus of SGD5.948 billion.