South East Asian markets: Singapore, Malaysia stocks lowest in one week

Southeast Asian stock markets fell on Thursday, anxious about coming key events in the eurozone and as doubts emerged about the ability of European leaders to agree on a plan to tackle that region's debt crisis. Market players cashed in recent gainers, sending stocks in Singapore and Malaysia to the lowest in one week, sliding 1.95 percent and 0.68 percent, respectively.
A surprise announcement by the city-state's government on new steps to cool property prices whacked shares of property developers. The emerging share markets were largely dominated by domestic trading of stocks, with late bargain hunting helping erase some losses in Thailand and Indonesia.
The Thai SET index and Jakarta's Composite Index both edged down 0.3 percent. "There's nothing changed in the morning and evening. It's just a little bit of flows," said Vikas Kawatra, managing director of institutional sales at Maybank Kim Eng Securities (Thailand) in Bangkok. Philippine stocks ended nearly flat while Vietnam's stocks fell for a third session, dropping 1.44 percent.
Asian shares fell on Thursday, with MSCI's broadest index of Asia Pacific shares outside Japan dropping 0.7 percent, by 0957 GMT. Singapore-listed CapitaLand Ltd, Southeast Asia's largest developer, plunged 7.3 percent, while No 2 ranked City Developments Ltd dropped 8.4 percent.
Thailand's top industrial conglomerate Siam Cement Pcl rose up 0.3 percent after saying it expected double-digit growth in sales in 2012 to more than $13 billion due to post-flood demand for cement and building materials. Indonesia experienced an inflow of $22 million inflows on Thursday to add to the $238 million it had during the previous three sessions. The Philippines, which received $110 million the last six days, got another $14.2 million on Thursday, Thomson Reuters data showed. The Malaysian bourse said foreign investors bought 39.47 million ringgit ($12.63 million) worth of shares on Thursday.