Singapore shares fall on Tuesday; STI down 1.2%
Sembcorp Industries leads the gainers on the blue-chip index
On Tuesday (Aug 18), Singapore's main stock index, the Straits Times Index (STI), closed 1.2% lower at 5,701.40 points. Sembcorp Industries emerged as the top performer, gaining 1.8% to reach S$6.08. Conversely, Hongkong Land witnessed the steepest decline, dropping 2.9% to US$8.33. The country's major banks, including DBS, OCBC, and UOB, all ended the day in the red.
DBS shed 1.5% to S$75.72, OCBC fell 1.9% to S$30.95, and UOB decreased 0.6% to S$40.88. In the iEdge Singapore Next 50 Index, China Aviation Oil was the biggest gain-maker, up 3.8% to S$1.62, while CSE Global slipped 5.9% to S$1.27. Throughout the market, the number of declining securities outnumbered the gainers by a margin of 341 to 250, with a total trading volume of 1.5 billion shares valued at S$2 billion.
Addvalue Tech led the trade activity, with 90.3 million shares changing hands, and DBS was the most actively traded stock by value, with 3.2 million shares amounting to S$244.6 million traded. According to Mathieu Racheter, head of equity strategy research at Julius Baer, the first half of 2026 was characterized by technology, particularly artificial intelligence-related semiconductor stocks.
However, since July, the market's leadership has expanded beyond technology to encompass sectors like financials and healthcare. Racheter anticipates this trend to persist, emphasizing that this is not a negative outlook on AI; rather, semiconductor fundamentals remain robust, and hyperscalers continue to raise their capex guidance.
Written by urgent.news from The Business Times - Companies & Markets's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
