The Singapore stock market has finished higher in four straight sessions, gathering almost 95 points or 3.3 percent along the way. The Straits Times Index now sits just beneath the 2,975-point plateau although it's due for a hard crash on Friday.
The global forecast for the Asian is firmly negative on treasury yield and interest rate concerns. The European and U.S. markets were firmly in the red and the Asian bourses figure to follow that lead.
The STI finished sharply higher on Thursday following gains from the financial shares, property stocks and industrial issues.
For the day, the index climbed 48.96 points or 1.67 percent to finish at 2,973.54 after trading between 2,949.62 and 2,976.36. Volume was 2.23 billion shares worth 1.96 billion Singapore dollars. There were 329 gainers and 184 decliners.
Among the actives, Ascendas REIT gained 1.01 percent, while CapitaLand rallied 2.54 percent, CapitaLand Integrated Commercial Trust accelerated 2.91 percent, City Developments climbed 2.46 percent, Comfort DelGro and DBS Group both added 1.89 percent, Dairy Farm International rose 1.82 percent, Genting Singapore climbed 1.18 percent, Keppel Corp increased 1.79 percent, Mapletree Commercial Trust jumped 2.51 percent, Mapletree Logistics Trust strengthened 1.08 percent, Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation collected 2.03 percent, SATS spiked 2.99 percent, SembCorp Industries surged 6.02 percent, Singapore Airlines skyrocketed 7.25 percent, Singapore Press Holdings perked 2.40 percent, Singapore Technologies Engineering gathered 2.14 percent, Thai Beverage advanced 2.08 percent, United Overseas Bank soared 3.22 percent, Yangzijiang Shipbuilding and Singapore Exchange both gained 1.92 percent and SingTel and Wilmar international were unchanged.
The lead from Wall Street is broadly negative as stocks opened in the red and saw the losses continue to accelerate as the day progressed.
The Dow plunged 559.85 points or 1.75 percent to finish at 31,402.01, while the NASDAQ plummeted 478.54 points or 3.52 percent to close at 13,119.43 and the S&P 500 tumbled 96.09 points or 2.45 percent to close at 3,829.34.
The sell-off on Wall Street followed a continued increase in treasury yields, which led to renewed concerns about interest rates. The yields on ten-year notes and thirty-year bonds rose to their highest levels in a year, with the ten-year yield spiking above 1.6 percent in intraday trading.
The increase in yields followed the release of a batch of largely upbeat U.S. economic data, including a report from the Labor Department showing a steep drop in first-time claims for U.S. unemployment benefits last week.
The Commerce Department also reported that new orders for U.S. manufactured durable goods spiked more than expected in January. A separate report from the Commerce Department showed U.S. gross domestic product jumped slightly more than estimated in the fourth quarter of 2020.
Crude oil futures rose on Thursday for a fourth straight session amid hopes global energy demand will see a significant rise and hit pre-Covid-19 levels by the end of this year. West Texas Intermediate Crude oil futures for April was up $0.31 or 0.5 percent at $63.53 a barrel after hitting a fresh 13-month high of $63.81 a barrel.
Closer to home, Singapore will provide January numbers for bank lending, industrial production and producer prices later today. In December, bank lending was at SGD678.7 billion, while industrial production was up 2.4 percent on month and 14.3 percent on year and producer prices fell 6.9 percent on year.
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