Wall Street closed out a banner August with a mixed session Monday, with tech shares propelling the Nasdaq to another record and a newly-tweaked Dow index retreating.

The gains in August have followed extraordinary fiscal and monetary measures to boost the coronavirus-battered US economy and have come as investors have shrugged off a partisan stalemate in Washington that has blocked progress on another big spending package.

Federal Reserve Vice Chair Richard Clarida on Monday described as "critical" a shift in the US central bank's monetary policy to allow higher inflation to maximise employment.

The final trading session of the month was the first with new Dow components, Amgen, Honeywell International and Salesforce. Amgen and Salesforce both gained, while Honeywell was among the industrial giants to fall.

Yangzijiang Shipbuilding has entered into an agreement with Hong Kong container shipping firm SITC International Holdings for the building and delivery of a dozen 1,800 twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) containerships, it said on Monday. Out of the orders for the 12 vessels, six are firm orders worth US$126 million in total.

Catalist-listed Malaysian glove maker UG Healthcare is proposing a share split of every one existing share into three shares, on a record date to be determined by the board later. The proposed stock split will reduce the price of each board lot and give investors greater flexibility in terms of the size of their trades, enhancing trading liquidity, the board said.

CNMC Goldmine said on Monday that its Chinese migrant workers are starting to return to work at its flagship Sokor gold field in Malaysia's Kelantan state. A small number of these workers recently completed a mandatory 14-day quarantine upon their arrival in Malaysia from China, and are now back at work at Sokor.

BRC Asia, the largest steel reinforcement supplier in Singapore, plans to sell a property located at 32G Nassim Road for S$38.38 million, it said on Monday.

Keppel Corp said on Monday that Keppel Land has entered into a joint venture with leading Indian developer Emerald Haven Realty (TVS Emerald), a TVS Group company, to jointly develop a freehold condominium project on a prime 2.4 hectare site in south Chennai, India.

Upstream oil and gas company KrisEnergy on Monday said it had received a confidential non-binding conditional offer from AlHassan International Holdings (AIH) in 2017, among others, to acquire certain assets of KrisEnergy.

Source: SGX Masnet, The Business Times, Bloomberg, Channel NewsAsia, Reuters, PSR