A LIMP trading session yesterday finished with brokers heaving a sigh of relief that the boredom had ended and with the Straits Times Index standing 12.99 points weaker at 2,749.19.

Prices hardly budged throughout trading hours, forcing dealers and remisiers to try their luck at intraday punting, the alternatives being to watch TV or doze off at their terminals. As such, penny stocks were active, a focus that was amply demonstrated by the volume traded - excluding foreign currency issues, 1.26 billion units worth $1.05 billion were done for an average of 83 cents per unit.

The backdrop was somewhat confusing with no clear direction from any quarter - a firm Wall Street which rose on Wednesday after the US Federal Reserve said that it would continue feeding the market with cheap money, versus a weak Hong Kong market still reeling from the government's anti-property-speculation budget. Here, local property stocks have had their own problems to deal with after the government announced anti-speculation measures of its own. In yesterday's session, most were marginally weaker but United Engineers rose three cents to $2.02 after it announced a net profit of $52 million for 2009 compared with $6 million a year earlier.

In calling an 'outperform' on UE, CIMB said that the market may have overlooked an improved outlook for commercial properties in valuing UE. It said that UE's price at a depressed 0.5x book value suggests undervaluation and set a fair price of $2.83.

Among the banks, DBS and OCBC were weaker but UOB added 16 cents at $18.76 ahead of its results announcement today. This gain added two points to the STI.

Among commodities stocks, Straits Asia Resources (SAR) dropped seven cents to $2.07 with 28.6 million traded after reporting a 7.3 per cent rise in 2009 profit to US$133.5 million. In response, OCBC Investment issued a 'sell'. 'SAR again refrained from providing any updates on its FY2010 contracts and pricing. This leaves some discomfort in terms of the group's earnings visibility, as it suggests that the group has not made significant progress in pricing its output although we are already approaching the end of Q1 2010 (management had previously planned to price the bulk of its FY2010 output by Q4 2009). The lack of commitment leaves SAR's earnings vulnerable to volatility in the thermal coal spot market, which has been on a downtrend since hitting a YTD high of US$99/tonne in January.'

The broker also cited concern over succession planning in SAR's top management and set a fair value of $1.73 for its shares.

In its Feb 25 Asia Strategy, Nomura said that it continues to like the Asian banks, as no country in Asia has any sovereign issue remotely resembling those in the West.

'Asian banks valuations are at fair value. We still prefer Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore and China. We have added Standard Chartered back into the portfolio after taking profit back in October,' said Nomura.

In its Wired Daily yesterday, DBS-Vickers said that there is no change to its view that the main correction trend remains intact. 'We observe a slight uptick in interest among small cap stocks but the environment is one of trading rather than trending,' said DBSV.

Excluding derivatives, there were 145 rises versus 240 falls yesterday.