Singapore Macro Steady, Micro Rotation Clear: Institutions Add to Tech, Industrials, Utilities
Singapore: Macro Resilience in a Higher Risk Global Environment
The advance 1Q26 GDP report indicates that Singapore’s economy has remained resilient on a YoY basis, while overall sequential momentum has softened amid rising imported cost pressures.
March PMI data pointed to businesses placing greater emphasis on margin protection, inventory management, and supply resilience, as input and output prices continue to rise and stockbuilding accelerates. Taken together, these developments are consistent with an operating environment increasingly shaped by external cost and geopolitical risks rather than a sharp deterioration in domestic demand.
The MAS MPS on April 14 also made a slight increase in the rate of appreciation of the S$NEER policy band. This allows the Singapore dollar to appreciate faster, with MAS noting that imported energy costs have already risen and broader price pressures are building across goods and services.
Within this backdrop, attention has focused on areas where activity remains more closely tied to tangible output, particularly manufacturing, electronics and selected industrial segments. Electronics continued to anchor manufacturing growth, with strength in semiconductors offsetting weaker momentum in biomedical manufacturing.
In local equity markets, this has been accompanied by net institutional inflows into manufacturing‑capacity, testing and precision‑engineering names, alongside selective industrial stocks exposed to capex and infrastructure activity.
Institutional Positioning in Early April 2026
Net institutional inflow in April has been the strongest in Industrials, Technology and Utilities. Within Technology, inflows have included businesses such as $AEM SGD(AWX.SI)$ , $UMS(558.SI)$ and $Frencken(E28.SI)$ , which operate within semiconductor manufacturing and test ecosystems.
Exposure has been more evident in areas linked to existing production activity and installed capacity. Industrial stocks including $ST Engineering(S63.SI)$ , $Seatrium Ltd(5E2.SI)$ and $SATS(S58.SI)$ have also seen inflows, with exposure spanning defence, infrastructure, and logistics‑related businesses. Real‑asset exposure has been selective.
REITs have continued to attract selective net institutional inflow, while flows across the broader property segment have been mixed. Multiple iEdge Next 50 stocks ranked among the 30 stocks with the highest net institutional inflow, in addition to five stocks with market capitalisation of less than S$500 million.
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