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SINGAPORE – Local investors took fright at another set of poor export numbers and sent shares sliding on Thursday – their fourth straight session in the red this week.
News that the country’s non-oil domestic shipments in July slid 20.2 per cent year on year meant that there was little room for the Straits Times Index (STI) to go but down on Thursday.
The blue-chip barometer dropped 0.5 per cent or 16.83 points to 3,196.75 with losers beating gainers 315 to 289 on trade of 1.1 billion shares worth $1 billion.
It wasn’t much better elsewhere in the region following another losing session for Wall Street overnight after US Federal Open Market Committee minutes indicated that participants felt that inflation remained “unacceptably high”.
The next moves remain unclear with a divergence of views apparent on the committee but there are real fears that more interest rate hikes will be in the mix.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 slid 0.4 per cent to hit its lowest level since June, the Kospi in South Korea fell 0.2 per cent on its fifth straight day of losses and Malaysian shares ended down 1.1 per cent. Australian stocks followed Wednesday’s plunge by falling 0.7 per cent to a five-week low but Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was mostly flat.
Singapore property group Hongkong Land shed 2.2 per cent to US$3.62 after being the STI’s top gainer on Wednesday.
Seatrium continued to be heavily traded, with 236.7 million shares changing hands before the counter closed up 1.5 per cent at 13.6 cents.
The shipbuilding company was in the news on Wednesday as a man was charged over corruption offences allegedly committed when he was a commercial executive of Sembcorp Marine Integrated Yard, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sembcorp Marine.
Sembcorp Marine was rebranded as Seatrium in April.
The three local banks continued to decline: UOB fell 0.6 per cent to $28.11; OCBC dropped 0.5 per cent to $12.31; and DBS dipped 1 per cent to $32.77. THE BUSINESS TIMES
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