Asian equities, including Singapore’s, were cued by Wall Street’s overnight relief rally, and ended higher on Tuesday (Oct 4).
Factory data from the United States last night showed that the world’s top economy had underperformed, and this made investors hopeful that the hawkish Federal Reserve might ease its interest rate hikes, The Business Times reported.
While a handful of markets closed over 2 per cent higher, Singapore’s blue-chip benchmark, Straits Times Index (STI), managed to rise only 1.02 per cent or 31.81 points to 3,138.9 points, as some of the excitement had fizzled out by the time the closing bell rang.
Singtel: Z74 +0.38% shares rose 0.4 per cent, closing at S$2.61, a day after it said its Australian subsidiary Optus had the personal identification data of some 2.1 million of its 9.8 million customers leaked in a cyberattack in late September, which Bloomberg reported might cost the telco to incur a cost of as much as US$560 million.
Sats : S58 0% shares remained sluggish despite its counterpart and key customer in the aviation sector Singapore Airlines (SIA) : C6L +0.99% having said it would raise frequencies to East Asia. The inflight caterer and ground handler’s acquisition it proposed last week of air cargo handler Worldwide Flight Services led the counter to fall off the cliff. Sats shares were flat at S$2.99, compared to SIA’s 1 per cent rise to S$5.11 at market close.
Sats and Thai Beverage were the only counters among the 30 STI stocks that did not finish higher.
