SG Morning Brief｜STI Sinks 1.4% as Banks Slide Into Earnings Week

• STI — closed Monday at 5,303.83, down 72.91 points (-1.4%) as all three local banks slid ahead of earnings.

• Local catalyst — banks report Q3 this week: $UOB (U11.SG)$ Wednesday, $DBS (D05.SG)$ Thursday, $OCBC (O39.SG)$ Friday.

• US overnight — the Dow added 0.4% while the S&P 500 (-0.5%) and Nasdaq (-1.1%) fell on a tech-to-value rotation; oil slumped more than 7% on US-Iran diplomacy signals.

• Today's schedule — US midterm elections close today (results flow in Wednesday morning Singapore time), and $AMD (AMD.US)$ reports after the US close.

Singapore Open

The Straits Times Index lost 72.91 points, or 1.4%, on Monday to close at 5,303.83 as the banking heavyweights dragged. $OCBC (O39.SG)$ was the STI's worst performer, falling 3.3% to S$28.32, while $DBS (D05.SG)$ slipped 1.9% to S$71.71 and $UOB (U11.SG)$ lost 1.7% to S$40.66. $Singtel (Z74.SG)$ eased 0.5% and $ST Engineering (S63.SG)$ fell 2.3%, while Jardine Matheson led gainers, up 2.1%.

The selling lands right before the sector's earnings season. UOB reports third-quarter results on Wednesday, followed by DBS on Thursday and OCBC on Friday. Jefferies flagged deposit-repricing pressure as a headwind, arguing DBS's deposit franchise leaves it better positioned than OCBC and UOB. The semiconductor-linked names that have weighed on the index — AEM, UMS and Frencken — stay in focus if AMD's report tonight resets chip sentiment.

Singapore Macro

Singapore's economy is still expanding quickly: third-quarter GDP grew 5.4% year on year, cooling from 6.2% in Q2 but still powered by the AI-driven manufacturing boom. With September headline inflation at 2.2%, the MAS has held policy steady since October after tightening twice this year.

The overnight 7% slide in crude matters here. Cheaper oil eases imported energy inflation, reinforcing the MAS's on-hold stance and taking pressure off the Singapore dollar's trade-weighted path. The domestic watch item is deposit costs: as banks reprice deposits, net interest margins stay under pressure — exactly what this week's three bank reports will clarify.

US Overnight

Wall Street split along value-versus-growth lines on Monday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 213.67 points, or 0.4%, to 51,983.98, but the S&P 500 shed 0.5% to 7,541.40 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 1.1% to 25,164.32. The catalyst was a sharp slide in oil: West Texas Intermediate fell more than 7% to around $96.50 a barrel — its lowest since mid-October — after Iran signalled willingness to negotiate with Washington.

Key Movers

$Oracle (ORCL.US)$ -8.8% — shares fell to $119.22 after Bloomberg reported a $10 billion bond sale plus a $10 billion share offering priced at $116, an 11% discount to Friday's close, to fund AI data-centre buildout (fiscal 2026 capex is set to roughly double to $55.7 billion).

$Lumentum (LITE.US)$ -12.2% — the optical components maker tumbled after $Marvell (MRVL.US)$ agreed to buy it for an enterprise value of about $115 billion at no premium to shareholders; Marvell edged higher.

$Intel (INTC.US)$ -8.8% — shares kept sliding to $59.97, extending a rout that began with a weak fourth-quarter outlook and the deepest single-day drop since the 1970s, as PC softness compounds its foundry struggles.

After hours, $Apple (AAPL.US)$ initially fell about 3% to near $329. The iPhone maker's fiscal Q4 revenue rose 12% year on year, beating estimates, but services growth slowed to roughly 10% and management guided December-quarter gross margin to 45%-46%, below the ~46.7% consensus — stoking concerns that storage costs and AI cloud spending are eating into profitability. Still moving at time of writing.

Asia Pre-Market

WTI crude was near $96.50 a barrel after Monday's plunge, gold traded around $3,900 an ounce — below $4,000 after a rough October — and Bitcoin hovered near $77,900, held back by the recent Binance hack and ETF outflows. US equity futures were little changed in early Asian trade, with Apple's post-close drop offsetting the relief from cheaper oil. For the SGX open, the read-through is two-sided: cheaper energy is a tailwind for inflation and aviation fuel costs, but the chip complex stays fragile until AMD's print.

This Week's US Earnings and Economic Calendar

The rest of the week is unusually crowded: the US midterms land alongside the monthly jobs report and a final burst of big-cap earnings.

Earnings to watch:

US data calendar:

Earnings Spotlight: AMD. The chip designer reports after Tuesday's US close, with Street consensus running from about $1.68 (Nasdaq) to $1.94 a share on roughly $13.1 billion in revenue, as data-centre GPU and AI-accelerator demand stays the key swing factor. The bar has moved after Intel's weak outlook knocked AMD 10.9% lower on Oct 30 — so guidance, not just the beat, will drive the reaction, with a direct read-through to SGX semiconductor names like AEM, UMS and Frencken. Note the week's second macro anchor: Friday's nonfarm payrolls, where a strong print (consensus +55k to +65k) could revive December Fed-hike odds.

One More Thing

A useful lens for this week: separate sector rotation from genuine risk-off. Monday's tape — Dow up, Nasdaq down, oil crashing — looks like rotation, not a broad exodus. If bank earnings hold up while chips stabilise, the STI's slide toward 5,300 may prove to be positioning, not fundamentals. Watch the midterm result and Friday's payrolls to tell which regime you are actually in.

Sources: The Business Times, CNBC, StockTitan, Brown Brothers Harriman.

This briefing is compiled with AI assistance from market data and wire reports, and reviewed by the Longbridge editorial team before publication.

This briefing is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.