South East Asian stocks mostly down

Indonesia's stock market fell to a two-week low on Wednesday, led by banks, and most other Southeast Asian markets were lower after Federal Reserve comments that highlighted the weakness of the US recovery. Indonesia, the region's best performer with a 44 percent rise this year, fell 0.9 percent to its lowest close since December 1. Jakarta suffered foreign outflows of $121 million on the day, the highest since October 19, Reuters data showed.
"A lot of investors are happy to book profits ahead of the holidays," said Harry Su, head of research at Jakarta-based Bahana Securities. "Banks have been the best-performing stocks this year and investors, including foreigners, are now selling them."
Bank Internasional Indonesia fell 6.7 percent, while top lender Bank Mandiri lost 1.5 percent. Some regional analysts said the year-end foreign selling in Indonesia was also due to its high valuations. Indonesia is trading at 14.9 times this year's projected earnings, the highest in the region, compared to all-Asia's 13.3. Thailand is trading at 12.5, lower than the 13.9 in Malaysia, 13.8 in Singapore and 13.4 in the Philippines, Thomson Reuters StarMine data shows.
Most other stock markets in the region closed down after the Fed said the US economic recovery was still too weak to bring down unemployment. The Philippines fell 1.4 percent to a two-week low, Singapore ended 0.9 percent weaker at its lowest close since November 30, Thailand lost 0.2 percent and Malaysia edged down 0.1 percent. All these markets saw light volume compared to their 90-day average. Vietnam bucked the trend and gained 0.8 percent to hit an 11-month high thanks to bargain-hunting.
In Bangkok, energy shares - led by a 2.5 percent loss in PTT Exploration and Production and a 1.2 percent drop in PTT - drove the bourse down. But Bangkok Dusit Medical Services, Thailand's largest hospital operator, jumped 15.9 percent to a three-year high after it announced plans to take over two local hospitals for $327 million and said it expected a 20 percent rise in its 2010 net profit. In Singapore, DBS Group, Southeast Asia's biggest lender, closed down 0.1 percent. The bank said it would take over British bank RBS's retail and commercial business in three Chinese cities.