Southeast Asian stock markets rose in subdued trade on Wednesday as solid US economic data revived risk appetite and investors bought energy-related shares because of the strong oil market. Most markets saw low trading volume, with turnover in Thai stocks only half the 30-day average, due to the Lunar New Year holidays in much of Asia.
Singapore and Malaysia are shut on Thursday and Friday while Indonesia closes on Thursday. Vietnam is closed all week. The MSCI emerging index has underperformed the MSCI global so far this year, falling 1.8 percent against a 3.1 percent gain, and that is in large part due to the poor performance of Southeast Asia.
The MSCI Philippines index has fallen 10 percent, Indonesia 8.5 percent and Thailand 6.8 percent. However, the Thai and Indonesian markets have seen the return of foreign money in a small way over the past two sessions, with $63 million and $39 million respectively, Thomson Reuters data showed.
Thai stock suffered about $900 million in outflows in January, the biggest in the region. PT Bank Danamon, Indonesia's sixth-largest lender, rose 1.7 percent, recovering from a fall of almost 1 percent the day before, while PT Bank Negara Indonesia, the fourth-biggest lender, rose 2.3 percent after recovering from an early fall to end flat on Tuesday. In Manila, small-cap Megaworld Corp jumped 4.9 percent after the property developer said group sales almost doubled last year and that it was upbeat about prospects for the real-estate sector in 2011.
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