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The Straits Times Index (STI) turns 60 in 2026. Few benchmarks have this kind of history — long enough to have seen stock market fashions come and go, while efficiently updating their own wardrobe without making a fuss. In this way, the Straits Times Index is very much a time capsule: a series of market snapshots that has recorded the past while continuing to make room for the future.
A simple way to think about the Straits Times Index is as Singapore’s corporate image, retaken over time. The faces change. The background changes. The camera gets better. What stays consistent is the purpose: to provide a shared reference point for what market leadership in Singapore looks like at a given moment.
When the index began in 1966, Singapore’s modern economic story was still being drafted. The listed equity market was smaller, the investable universe was less global, and the corporate landscape reflected an earlier phase of the country’s economic development.
Over the decades, as Singapore moved from a trading hub and a centre of industrialisation into a more complex, services-oriented economy, the market’s leadership shifted too.
A notable “coming of age” chapter arrived in the late 1990s. Following a sector reclassification on the Singapore Exchange, today’s Straits Times Index replaced the earlier Straits Times Industrials Index on 31 August 1998. This shift signalled a more structured approach to how the market was defined, measured and communicated.
On 10 January 2008, the index was revamped, relaunched and recalculated using FTSE’s index methodology. In plain terms, the index narrowed its focus to the 30 largest and most liquid names in Singapore’s equity market.
While the Straits Times Index is sometimes read as a simple proxy for “Singapore”, its more interesting signal is the Lion City’s evolving definition of staying power.
Over long stretches, the index has revealed which business models keep attracting capital, which sectors continue to produce durable leaders, and how the balance between local anchors and outward-facing businesses has shifted as Singapore’s role in the region has deepened.
Around 2015, Real Estate emerged as the second-largest sector in the STI, helped by a buoyant run of large real estate investment trust (REIT) listings that reflected Singapore’s growing status as a REIT hub. That income profile also became part of the STI’s identity: by 2023, it was recognised for offering the highest dividend yield in the Asia Pacific region.
More recently, the STI has shown that maturity need not mean inertia. In 2024, it topped global indices on a total return basis, delivering 23.5 per cent in Singapore dollar terms — its strongest performance in more than a decade. That momentum carried into 2025 and 2026 as the index set multiple new records, culminating in its first break above the 5,000-point mark in February 2026. Taken together, these milestones suggest that the STI’s story is not only one of longevity, but also of renewed relevance.
Looking beyond 2026, the hopeful part of the index’s story is the same quality that has made it such a reliable gauge for the past 60 years. As Singapore continues to deepen its role as a global financial hub, attract new listings and adapt to shifting regional growth patterns, the Straits Times Index will keep evolving. It will remain a disciplined, public record of what leadership looks like in Singapore’s equity market as the next era takes shape. In that sense, the index is less a prediction engine and more a confidence signal.
An index mature enough to update itself over time reflects a market that is still building, still renewing and still open to new chapters. The next set of leaders may well not resemble the last, as new priorities in technology, sustainability, regional connectivity and capital formation shape the Straits Times Index of tomorrow. But one thing is clear: whatever the future holds, the index will continue to chart and reveal the chapters that become the defining ones.
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