Southeast Asian stock markets rose on Tuesday as investors sought bargains from recently-beaten shares with promising outlooks, including Thai refiners and financial stocks across the region. Trading remained lacklustre, with volume falling by half in most share markets in a dearth of market participants towards the year-end.
Indonesia climbed nearly 2 percent, reversing Monday's loss, while Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Vietnam posted smaller gains. Resources and financial shares, among sectors seen growing favourably next year, snapped their losing streaks, including Thailand's biggest oil refiner Thai Oil Pcl, which climbed 1.4 percent as gross refining margins rose with high oil prices.
Big-cap financials recouped their losses after coming under recent selling pressure, led by a 2.4 percent climb in Indonesia's second-largest bank by market capitalisation, PT Bank Mandiri. ING Investment Management expects real global 2011 GDP growth of 3.8 percent, compared with its forecast of 4.8 percent for 2010, while the expansion in GDP is projected at 6.5 percent next year, against 2010's 8.1 percent, in the emerging economies.
"The 2011 outlook for equities is good and we expect returns to be in line with earnings growth. However, investors will need to focus on yield and also growth markets, whilst any increase in corporate spending will be the icing on the cake," said Patrick Moonen, Senior Equity Strategist, Strategy and Tactical Asset Allocation Group. The fund forecasts Thailand's SET index could hit 1,200 next year, due to liquidity programmes provided by the central banks of the United States and Europe. The SET index closed at 1,013.19 on the day.