Lower Open Called For Thai Stock Market

(RTTNews) - The Thai stock market on Wednesday ended the five-day winning streak in which it had risen almost 25 points or 1.4 percent. The Stock Exchange of Thailand now sits just above the 1,640-point plateau and it's likely to open in the red again on Thursday.

The global forecast for the Asian markets is mixed to lower on surging crude oil prices and concerns over the Middle East conflict. The European markets were up and the U.S. bourses were down and the Asian markets figure to follow the latter lead.

The SET finished modestly lower on Wednesday following losses from the food, consumer, finance, property, resource and service sectors.

For the day, the index sank 12.12 points or 0.73 percent to finish at 1,640.85 after trading between 1,637.86 and 1,655.74. Volume was 7.499 billion shares worth 66.0.29 billion baht. There were 317 decliners and 107 gainers, with 210 stocks finishing unchanged.

The lead from Wall Street is soft as the major averages opened lower on Wednesday and bounced up and down throughout the session before ending slightly lower.

The Dow eased 6.06 points or 0.01 percent to finish at 52,218.58, while the NASDAQ slumped 146.30 points or 0.57 percent to end at 25,690.90 and the S&P 500 fell 10.24 points or 0.14 percent to close at 7,498.96.

The choppy trading on Wall Street came as traders seemed reluctant to make significant moves ahead of the release of some key earnings news from tech giants Alphabet (GOOGL), Tesla (TSLA) and IBM Corp. (IBM).

Traders attempted to shrug off an extended rally by the price of crude oil, with U.S. crude oil futures spiking to their highest levels in over a month amid concerns about the escalating conflict between the U.S. and Iran.

Crude oil prices jumped again on Wednesday on supply disruption concerns as the conflict between the U.S. and Iran shows no signs of letting up. West Texas Intermediate crude for September delivery was up $2.62 or 3.11 percent at $86.96 per barrel.