FTSE STI closed 3,031.69, down 9.06 points or -0.30% with total volume of 1.59b and a total value of S$775M. Total number of advance vs decline was 140 vs 221. Of the 30 component index stocks, 9 closed positive, 2 unchanged and 19 closed negative. The top 5 gainer component stocks were :-
1. KepCorp +0.200
2. OCBC +0.030
3. SembCorp +0.030
4. StarHub +0.030
5. DBS +0.020
5. ST Engg +0.020
The top 5 loser component stocks were :-
1. JSH 500US$ -1.470
2. JMH 400US$ -0.950
3. Jardine C&C -0.230
4. SIA -0.110
5. UOB -0.050
5. HKLand US$ -0.050
US markets fell average 1% last Friday after better than expected non-farm payroll data. Unemployment rate up 0.1% to 7.9% and number of jobs created more than expected. Asian bourses taking the cue of the sell down from US markets mostly traded in negative region. Nikkei -0.48%, SSE -0.14% and HSI -0.47%. STI fell 0.30% in a day whereby most of the activities were around the micro-penny stocks. Only 9 of the 30 index stocks managed to post positive closing.
Investors basically playing cautious ahead of tomorrow US Presidential Election. As for who will eventually win the election will affect the US economic policies for the next 4 years; ability to drag US back to growth and bring down the high unemployment rate. No doubt will have impact to rest of the world economy as US economy still being the #1 in the world. However, that impact to rest of the world could be well contained should each respective countries taking buffer steps to cushion it. This step is none other than enhancing respective domestic component of economic data. Though being cautious at the moment, there are still some bright spot in global economy. China in which will be having its leadership transition this week has managed to rebound its economy in both manufacturing and non-manufacturing sectors (as indicated by the past 2 days of PMI data) and Asian economy also showing stability lately.
The main problem of US fiscal cliff threat and EU debt crisis are still there and it all depend on how the respective leaders going to resolve it. Those events might cause global markets to have a jolt should the actions do not satisfy investors but looking at the other side of the glass of water, the jolt could bring out buying opportunity.
Couple of analysts without any doubts are calling for taking profit at current market. Question should be asked why such a call was not made last month or 2 months ago when stock markets were at their respective high. The calling for sell should not be generalized as different investors will have different investment objective and time frame. Be very cautious on just plain taking in advises from analysts just because market has no strength in moving up.
