Singapore shares fell 0.7% this week, mirroring regional gains with markets keeping one eye on US involvement in the Iran-Israel conflict.

In terms of star stocks, Emperador Inc. up 6%; Centurion up 4%; SingPost up 2.7%; Top Glove down 8%.

SingPost puts up 10 HDB shophouses for S$50 million in sale-and-leaseback bid

National postal service provider Singapore Post : S08 0%(SingPost) has put up 10 Housing & Development Board (HDB) shophouses for sale and leaseback under its plan to divest non-core assets.

These properties, distributed across the HDB heartlands, are expected to fetch S$50 million in total, The Business Times understands. The Teban Gardens Road shophouse has the lowest asking price of S$2.4 million, and the one in Bedok North, the highest at S$7.1 million.

Singapore’s Key Exports Chart Surprise 3.5% Slide in May

The Republic’s key exports declined 3.5 per cent on the year in May after April’s surge, contrary to market expectations, data from Enterprise Singapore showed on Tuesday (Jun 17).

The latest non-oil domestic exports (NODX) print reversed from the preceding month’s 12.4 per cent jump. It came as a shock, against the 7.8 per cent growth anticipated by private-sector economists in a Bloomberg poll.

On a seasonally adjusted monthly basis, NODX contracted 12 per cent, reversing from the preceding month’s 10.4 per cent expansion.

Singapore Banks Will Bear The Brunt of Lower Interest Rates, Says JP Morgan

The equity macro research team at JP Morgan (JPM), Khoi Vu, Rajiv Batra, Mervin Song, Terence M Khi and Harsh Wardhan Modi, finds that Singapore-focused REITs or stocks with resilient cashflows and leveraged balance sheets stand to gain from declining interest rates.

The team writes in their June 15 report: “While banks will bear the brunt of lower interest rates, we believe the sector could still be supported by resilient yields and strong inflows from domestic funds subscriptions.”

The upside from this, the team at JPM notes, will be best captured by Singapore REITs, due to lowering borrowing costs and their sheltering from factors typically experienced by overseas or trade-exposed REITs such as rising vacancies, falling prices and foreign exchange (forex) loss.