Asian equities stuttered in early trade on Tuesday after healthy gains in the previous session attracted profit-takers, offsetting a strong lead from Wall Street.
Shanghai lost 1.03 per cent after rallying Monday in response to the Chinese central bank's weekend interest rate cut, while Hong Kong pared an initial advance to sit marginally lower.
Tokyo eased 0.21 per cent and Seoul was flat, while Sydney edged up 0.12 per cent ahead of a closely watched interest rate decision by Australia's central bank later in the day.
US shares added to their six-year bull run Monday, with the Dow and S&P 500 again ending at record highs, while the Nasdaq surged above 5,000 for the first time since 2000, when the dot-com bubble burst.
SINGAPORE shares got off to a positive start on Tuesday with the Straits Times Index (STI) gaining 0.46 per cent, or 15.78 points, to hit 3,419.67 as at 9:04 am on the back of a strong overnight market in the United States.
The US equity markets had a solid showing to start the month, with the Nasdaq Composite Index making headlines for closing above 5,000 for the first time since 2000. The Nasdaq closed overnight at 5,008.10, up 0.9 per cent or 44.57 points.
The commodity segment dominated early activity. Top movers out of the gate were Golden Agri-Resources, which rose 1.25 per cent or half a cent to hit 40.5 Singapore cents on 17.3 million trades as at 9.04 am. Noble Group rose 3.2 per cent, or three Singapore cents, to change hands at 97.5 Singapore cents. About 81 million shares worth S$122.6 million changed hands in four minutes of trading, with gainers outpacing losers 95 to 69.
THE Straits Times Index (STI) kicked off the week by spending the entire session in the red before a push in the final seconds took it to a nett 1.03 points gain at 3,403.89.
Sentiment here was largely unaffected by an interest rate cut in China that pushed the Hang Seng and China indices higher. Instead, the STI appeared to run on either its own steam or on expectations of how Wall Street might perform in the session ahead and was dragged into the red by falls in DBS and OCBC.
Turnover was in line with recent daily averages at 1.4 billion units worth S$1.3 billion and excluding warrants, there were 169 rises versus 289 falls, indicating an overall weak session.