Most Southeast Asian stocks rebound

Most Southeast Asian stock markets pushed higher on Thursday, with beaten-down bank stocks rebounding, helped by signs that European policymakers are taking tentative steps to tackle a crippling debt crisis, but Indonesian stocks faced more selling. In choppy trade, Singapore's benchmark Straits Times Index finished up 0.97 percent, while Thailand's SET index climbed 1.3 percent. Philippine shares and Vietnam each gained around 0.8 percent.
--- Malaysia down ahead of three-day weekend
Indonesian shares saw further outflows of global capital. The benchmark Jakarta Composite Index ended down 0.7 percent, falling over 2 percent at one point to five-week lows. Indonesia's local currency bond market saw profit taking while the rupiah stabilised a sliding a day earlier. A fund manager at PT OSK Nusadana Asset Management in Jakarta said Indonesian assets are bound to be affected by growing risk in the eurozone and could face further selling.
Foreign investors sold Indonesian stocks for a fourth session on Thursday, unloading $160 million to bring net selling over the past three sessions to a combined $267 million, Thomson Reuters data showed. That compared with inflows in most other centres, including Malaysia's 118.36 million ringgit ($39 million), the Philippines' $1.2 million and Vietnam's $300,000, Thomson Reuters and stock exchange data showed.
Banks led losers in Jakarta amid weak global financial sentiment. Indonesia's largest lender, Bank Mandiri, dropped 1.6 percent, extending its losses for a fourth session and sliding to the lowest in almost six months at one point. Market turnover in Jakarta fell to around two-thirds a monthly average, in line with most major markets. Stocks in Malaysia edged down 0.5 percent ahead of three-day weekend, reopening on Monday.
By 0945 GMT, the MSCI Asia Pacific ex-Japan index was trading 1.31 percent higher. Shares of Singapore lenders bounced following a recent sell-off on concerns about a spillover effect from European banks, pressure on net interest margins and slowing loan growth, led by a 2.5 percent rise in Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp. In Bangkok, shares in Kasikornbank climbed 2.1 percent, recouping early losses, after credit-ratings agency Moody's affirmed the bank's ratings with a stable outlook.