Markets continue to soar as sentiment remains upbeat

This is despite underlying concerns over impact of possible policies under Trump

- Ven Sreenivasan

Markets continued to drive northwards last week, powered by the "Trump trade", pleasing corporate results, a benign inflation outlook and generally upbeat sentiment on prospects for economic growth.

This came despite underlying concerns about the impact of policies that could be implemented by the incoming Trump administration in Washington.

On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at another record as it rose 426 points on Nov 22. Its close at a new high of 44,296.51 points translated into a weekly gain of 1.96 per cent for the marquee index. The broader S&P 500 index rose 1.68 per cent to 5,969.34 points, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq was up 1.73 per cent for the week at 19,003.65 points.

This occurred as the first major US consumer sentiment survey since the Nov 5 presidential election showed that people felt better about the economy.

The Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index for November came in at 71.8, which was an improvement over the October reading. However, this was below the preliminary November reading of 73.0, which was concluded just before the election of Donald Trump. The final reading was also lower than the forecast of 73.5 by economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires.

In Singapore, the Straits Times Index was up 0.04 per cent for the week at 3,746.02 points after spending the majority of the five sessions consolidating between 3,750 and 3,730.

The five strongest index stocks last week were the Singapore Exchange (up 11.6 per cent), DFI Retail Group Holdings (up 7.6 per cent), Yangzijiang Shipbuilding (up 5.9 per cent), Jardine Matheson Holdings (up 3.3 per cent) and Seatrium (up 2.7 per cent).