Singapore stocks continued to fall this week. The benchmark Straits Times Index (STI) lost 1.34 per cent or 76.3 points to finish at 5,634.82.

In terms of individual stocks, AEM SGD, AvePoint rose over 8%; PC Partner, UMS rose over 6%; Geo Energy Res rose over 5%; IFAST fell about 7%; CMS fell 9%; First Resources, Bumitama Agri down around 11%; CityDev down nearly 15%.

Market News

Singapore Home Prices Accelerate Despite Slowdown in Sales

Singapore private home prices rose at the fastest pace since 2024 even as sales slowed, in a sign that the property boom in the city-state has yet to abate.

An index of private residential property increased by 1.4% in the third quarter, accelerating from 0.5% in the second, according to preliminary estimates released by the Urban Redevelopment Authority Thursday.

Home sales have dropped significantly amid a dearth of new major project releases, which have long been a major driver of property price surges in the city-state. Overall transactions in the quarter through mid-September were down about 30% from the second, figures released by the authority show.

Singapore Power Rates to Fall From Record After Fuel Price Drop

Power rates for Singapore households will decline from a record high as lower fuel costs provide some relief from inflation.

The charge will fall 10% to 28.59 Singapore cents ($0.22) per kilowatt-hour for the three months from October, grid operator SP Group said in a statement. Singapore relies largely on imports of natural gas to generate electricity, and the authorities adjust tariffs each quarter based on prices over the first two-and-a-half months of the prior period.

While global oil and gas prices have been increasing over the last few weeks, they were generally lower during the July to mid-September period compared to when the Iran war began. Singapore’s liquefied natural gas imports are typically priced against oil for medium- and long-term contracts, or against spot LNG benchmarks.

Singapore Sees First Data Breach Linked to AI Use, ST Reports

Singapore received its first notification of an AI-related data breach after a food company accidentally disclosed customers’ email addresses to other recipients of a bulk email, the Straits Times reported, citing the country’s Personal Data Protection Commission.

Bee Cheng Hiang, a well-known local producer of Chinese-style pork jerky, told the commission the incident occurred in April after an employee used a generative AI tool to create a program for sending emails in batches to a local mailing list. The employee, however, failed to instruct the program to hide each recipient’s email address from other customers. It was the first time the company had used an AI tool in its business operations, the newspaper reported on Wednesday.

The breach, which was reported to the commission two days after the incident, exposed the email addresses of more than 95,000 customers. No other personal data was affected, and the exposed information wasn’t managed, processed or generated by any AI-powered operation or process, the commission told the Straits Times.

Bee Cheng Hiang has since introduced a requirement for at least two staff members to verify all bulk email communications before they are sent, the newspaper reported.

MAS Appoints 5 Asset Managers with S$1.45 Billion Allocation to Support Singapore Stock Market

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) on Tuesday (Sep 29) appointed five new asset managers under the Equity Market Development Programme (EQDP) to support Singapore's equities market.

This is the third batch of asset managers appointed under the S$6.5 billion (US$5.08 billion) programme, which aims to strengthen the local asset management and research ecosystem and attract more investors to the local stock market. 

Singapore's Factory Output Growth Accelerates to 15.4% in August, but Undershoots Estimates

The Republic’s factory output surged 15.4 per cent year on year in August, picking up from July’s revised 6.9 per cent growth – but falling below consensus estimates for a median 18.3 per cent expansion in a Bloomberg poll.

Excluding the volatile biomedical manufacturing cluster, output grew 17 per cent year on year, extending the 8.2 per cent increase recorded in July, data from the Economic Development Board (EDB) showed on Monday (Sep 28).

On a seasonally adjusted monthly basis, factory output slipped 0.5 per cent in August, marking a reversal from July’s 2.3 per cent gain. Excluding biomedical manufacturing, output grew 5.8 per cent, compared with an 0.8 per cent rise in the previous month.