Daily Markets Briefing: STI down 0.18%

Banks and property developers underperformed.

According to KGI Fraser, the STI trended down in the morning, and surged back into positive territory during the afternoon.

The index, however, dropped sharply during the final ten minutes, resulting in a 5.47 points (-0.18%) loss for the day, to close at 3,019.03, KGI Fraser said.

Here’s more from KGI Fraser:

Key stocks that dragged the index down include banks and property developers, DBS (-0.9%), OCBC (-0.5%), HongKong Land (-1.4%) and CapitaLand (-2.2%); while gains in commodity counters such as Wilmar (+8.9%), Golden Agri (+2.7%) and Noble Group (+2.0%) helped to prop up the benchmark.

The broad market in the U.S. closed marginally lower as mixed quarterly earnings kept investors largely on the sidelines on Tuesday, with the main stock-indexes trading in narrow ranges.

The Dow declined 13.43 points, or less than 0.1%, to settle at 17,217.11, with IBM weighing on the index. IBM shares dropped 5.8% after a 14th consecutive decline in quarterly revenue.