Total share buyback in September plummeted to $14.9m

23 firms bought back 49.7 million shares during the month.

The total share buyback consideration plunged to $14.9m in September from $70.1m in August, which is said to be the lowest consideration figure since December 2016, according to an SGX report.

This monthly figure is also significantly lower than that of September last year with a total buyback consideration of $94m.

There were 23 primary-listed stocks that reported buybacks of their SGX-listings over the month, buying back a total of 49.7 million shares, led by Yangzijiang Shipbuilding, Stamford Land Corporation, Singapore Press Holdings, ST Engineering and Global Investments.

SGX also noted that the volatility gauges of the Straits Times Index (STI) in the last 180 and 250 trading days have continued to trend lower since January. The 180-day historical volatility gauge for the STI has declined from 13.8% in December 2018 to 10.1% as of end-September. Select stocks have also seen short-term volatility gauges decline, such as Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp seeing its 30-day historical volatility gauge back at its level in October 2017.

In August, the STI edged 0.4% higher with dividend distributions from Venture Corporation and Genting Singapore marginally improving the STI total return to 0.5%. This brought the STI’s total return for the first nine months of 2019 to 5.3%, the FTSE ST Mid Cap Index at 11.3% and the iEdge S-REIT Index at 25.9%.