Thai Stock Market May Extend Losing Streak

(RTTNews) - The Thai stock market has finished lower in three straight sessions, sliding almost 35 points or 2.2 percent in that span. The Stock Exchange of Thailand now sits just beneath the 1,545-point plateau and it's looking at another soft start again on Friday.

The global forecast for the Asian markets is soft with renewed selling pressure likely among the technology stocks. The European markets were up and the U.S. markets were down and the Asian bourses figure to follow the latter lead.

The SET finished sharply lower on Thursday following losses among the food, finance, industrial, service, resource and technology sectors.

For the day, the index dropped 21.50 points or 1.37 percent to finish at 1,544.60 after trading between 1,544.20 and 1,564.92. Volume was 10.349 billion shares worth 68.972 billion baht. There were 339 decliners and 109 gainers, with 193 stocks finishing unchanged.

The lead from Wall Street is negative as the major averages opened under water on Thursday and stayed that way throughout the trading day, although they came off session lows.

The Dow shed 132.54 points or 0.25 percent to finish at 52,342.56, while the NASDAQ tumbled 365.13 points or 1.38 percent to end at 26,184.72 and the S&P 500 sank 23.59 points or 0.30 percent to close at 7,720.39.

The sharp pullback by the NASDAQ came as technology stocks came under pressure as concerns about artificial trade once again resurfaced on Wall Street.

Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL) led the way lower, plunging by 13.2 percent after reporting weaker-than-expected third quarter revenue as well as negative free cash flow.

On the U.S. economic front, a closely watched report from the Commerce Department showed consumer prices in the U.S. increased in line with estimates in the month of September.

Crude oil prices moved lower on Thursday on expectations of a possible de-escalation in the U.S.-Iran conflict as Qatar presses Iran to negotiate with the U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude for December delivery was down $0.79 or 0.77 percent at $101.99 per barrel.

Closer to home, Thailand will release September numbers for industrial production, imports, exports, trade balance and current account later today. Industrial production is tipped to rise 2.80 percent on year, down from 4.44 percent in August.

In August, imports were up 31.3 percent on year and exports jumped an annual 25.3 percent for a trade surplus of $1.80 billion. The current account surplus was $2.40 billion.