Daily Briefing: STI up 1.6%

Expect more support from Wall Street today.

The Straits Times Index (STI) ended 51.76 points or 1.6% higher to 3287.43 on Friday, taking the year-to-date performance to +14.12%.

The top active stocks yesterday were Global Logistic, which gained 21.85%, Singtel, which gained 1.30%, OCBC Bank, which gained 1.28%, DBS, which gained 0.33% and United Engineers, with a 1.48% fall.

OCBC Investment Research said stocks finished higher against a mixed set of corporate bank results as well as weak retail sales and inflation data points. For the week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1% and the Nasdaq climbed 2.6%.

Meanwhile, ten out of 11 S&P 500 industries ended higher, with Real Estate (1.06%) and Information Technology (0.89%) leading gains, while Financials lost 0.57%. For the week, the S&P 500 was up 1.4%.

"The continued gains on Wall Street last Friday could provide some support to the local bourse this morning," the brokerage firm said.