US and European markets rallied overnight as optimism continued that the current 1Q results season will beat consensus estimates. Technology and health care companies led gainers. Sentiment was also underpinned by the Japan PM's reiteration of bold monetary easing. The local bourse should be firmer today with major US indices making yet another post GFC high. Expect the STI to reclaim the 3310-3320 level in the current session.

Our plantation analyst expects CPO price to recover in 2Q13. After two consecutive years of growth, oil palm trees are due to experience flatter yields this year. Hence, current low prices and lower-than-expected yields may diminish Malaysia's palm oil inventories faster than we had anticipated. This, together with any slowdown in the Chinese soybean crushing volume should result in higher palm oil exports. Hence, we maintain our CPO price forecasts, despite continued weakness YTD. We expect CPO prices to recover to between RM2,600 and RM2,800 in 2Q13. We are also bullish on the longer term, as current difficulties to expand in Indonesia would cause diminishing supply growth from 2016F onwards. For exposure in this sector, our pick for SGX-listed CPO stock is First Resources(BUY, TP: S$2.16). We believe its share price drops (steeper than peers) have more than priced in this year's negative earnings growths.

Tiger Airwaysoperating statistics for March 2013. Tiger Singapore recorded a 30% increase in traffic to 766 million revenue passenger-kilometres (RPK) for the month of March 2013. This comes on the back of a 31% increase in capacity to 894 million available seat-kilometres (ASK). Consequently, y-o-y passenger load factor was 1 percentage point lower at 86%. For the 12 months to March 2013, passenger load factor was three percentage points higher at 84%. Tiger Australia recorded a 78% increase in traffic to 267 million RPK while capacity increased 66% to 313 million ASK for the month of March 2013. As a result, passenger load factor improved 6 percentage points to 85%. In March 2013, Tiger Australia carried 245,000 passengers, representing an increase of 108% over the previous period. The airline was operating at a significantly reduced capacity and on a limited schedule a year ago. For the 12 months to March 2013, passenger load factor remained unchanged at 83%.