The 2,400 level has proven to be a strong resistance level for the STI, having been breached intra-day but never at the close. The index came close to that level 2 Fridays ago, when it closed at 2,396.4. Since then, the STI has retraced 6.6% to close at 2,237.2 yesterday.

No surprises here given the 6.1% correction in the index over the past week. Most blue chip stocks were down with investors switching to defensive names like StarHub (+2.4% week-on-week [wow], $2.15) and ST Engineering (+4.2% wow, $2.49).

Property developers were sold down sharply Large cap property developers like CapitaLand (-8.6% wow, $3.50), City Dev (-10.2% wow, $8.50) and Keppel Land (-12.8% wow, $2.18) were hammered over the past week.

The 3 local banks fell more than the STI over the past week, with DBS (-7.3% wow, $11.50), UOB (-8.9% wow, $14.10) and OCBC (-8.8% wow, $6.65) closing in the red.

Commodity related stocks like Straits Asia (-12.0% wow, $1.68), Indofood Agri (-11.0% wow, $1.21), Golden Agri (-10.3% wow, $0.39) and Noble (-7.7% wow, $1.67) weakened in line with the 3.7% wow retracement in the Reuters / Jefferies CRB index. The index comprises both hard commodities like Gold and Crude Oil, as well as soft commodities like Soybeans and Wheat.