Daily Markets Briefing: STI down 0.17%

But the rebound on Wall Street could keep local bourse fairly bouyant.

The Straits Times Index (STI) ended 5.08 points or 0.17% lower to 3000.94 on Wednesday, taking the year-to-date performance to +4.10%.

OCBC said this came as Dow Jones Industrial Average closed less than 50 points from the psychologically-important 20,000 mark following President-elect Donald Trump’s first news conference in months. The Nasdaq also extended gains to its fifth straight record close.

Meanwhile, eight out of eleven S&P 500 industries ended higher, with Energy (1.20%) leading the gains while Health Care (-1.04%) led the declines.

"The rebound on Wall Street overnight could make local sentiment fairly buoyant this morning," the firm noted.

The top active stocks today were DBS, which gained 0.28%, Singtel, which gained 0.53%, UOB, which declined 0.57%, Ascendas REIT, which gained 0.41% and OCBC Bank, with a 0.54% fall.

Here's more from OCBC:

We note that RSI is starting to turn down just above 70% level, and the daily MACD continues to look pretty positive.

As before, we peg the initial resistance at 3015, where a failure to overcome this level convincingly could send the index back towards 3000, and even 2970.

Overall volume tumbled further, dropping 7.0% to 1.8b units traded, and total value fell 4.6% to S$1.2b, while average value/unit rose 2.6% to S$0.66.