Singapore’s STI can’t quite unstick its feet from the red, slipping 0.1% to 3,270.54 after rising for the previous four sessions it’s up around 3.4% for January.

“I wouldn’t say that the rally is over,” says Liu Jinshu, deputy lead analyst at SIAS Research. But he notes, “if you extrapolate the recent market returns for the month of January to the whole of 2013, the market would end 2013 on a very very high note. I don’t think buyers want to overstretch themselves. Buyers are probably waiting for a lower price point before accumulating further.”

He adds, “possibly we can touch 3300, provided there’s a positive catalyst to keep things going.” OCBC technical analysis expects a 3,240-3,300 trading range. Volume is 2.52 billion shares valued at $928.5 million.

Noble (N21.SG) is down 2.4% at $1.22 Argentina suspended it from a key grain registry for alleged tax evasion a person at Noble said the suspension wouldn’t impact operations.

Biosensors (B20.SG) is up 5.3% at $1.40 in strong volume after the company said it received the long-awaited CE Mark approval from the EU for its BioFreedom stent.