Some Thoughts on the Stock Market Today

After an eventful last week, this week has been quite volatile for the market, especially so for some shares. With some of the companies' releasing their second quarter results (for those who start the financial year on 1 Jan), some of the companies' share prices have obviously been quite affected in terms of the share price. I'm just going to cover briefly some of the shares that I've taken an interest in for the past week.

(Image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_market)

Keppel Corp

This seems to be big news among investment bloggers with several bloggers covering it. (Some people that have covered it are: Motley Fool, Rolf Suey, B from Forever Financial Freedom and Frugal Daddy - he discussed more on thoughts on oil) The drop in share price continue today as oil prices have dropped again (it's around $50 per barrel for Brent crude according to Bloomberg) I'm quite split on Keppel as my thoughts on oil and gas prices are that they would not increase back to original levels, I've covered the reasons in Thoughts on Oil and Gas Companies (Part 2), so Keppel would definitely be affected but then the share price seems quite low so it may still be able to provide good returns to its shareholders over the long run.

UOB

This share continued its decline today to $21.65. It is the only local bank that has declined in net profit for the quarter and its price has reflected that, sliding from above $23 at the start of last week to the current $21.65, a drop of more than 5% in one week. This weak quarter may be a good opportunity for a medium-term investor to pick up the share and sell it when it has a better quarter (which some say may come with the increase in the Fed interest rate, but the increase in the Fed interest rate is not certain as well)

Noble

Some people may view this as quite a speculative share. It's share price has dropped to 47 cents yesterday and today has rebounded to 60 cents. The share price has taken a dip in recent months, likely due to the fall in commodities prices and with China's growth slowing, the demand for raw materials is likely to remain low for the short-term. This share currently trades at a discount to its book value, but then it's return on equity isn't all that spectacular so I'm not really sure if it's a good buy at current prices, but then again, this is not really one of the shares I would like to spend time looking at.

Global Logistic

This is another company that has experienced a sudden drop and a rebound today. On 30 Jul, the share ended at $2.50 but yesterday it closed at $2.20 and it rebounded to end at $2.35. It's first quarter results (ends on 30 June so similar to second quarter for those starting on 1 Jan) has seen an improvement from the previous year and it's entering a definitive agreement to acquire a Industrial Income Trust (it's a REIT that operates distribution warehouses). I'm not really sure of the reason for the sudden drop, so it may be a good time to enter this blue-chip


So these are just some of the shares that I've been watching in the past week as the STI went below 3200, the former two as they are blue chips that have declined quite a fair bit in price while the latter two due to their large fluctuations in share price over the past week (but Global Logistic is a blue-chip as well, I just prefer the previous two as I have not really looked into Global Logistic yet).

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