The STI is down 0.6% at 3,241.92 at 3:17 p.m., pulling back sharply in the afternoon, tracking falls in Shanghai and Hong Kong bourses which extend losses after China’s weaker-than-expected December exports, sparking fears over a slowdown in Asia’s economic engine.

But Najeeb Jarhom, Senior VP of research at AmFraser, says today’s fall is healthy from a technical perspective; “Sometimes Monday is a good time for the market to go down, we’ve had quite a good run up since the New Year, in fact before Christmas we were at 3121 so we went up about 160 points so we could see a pull back towards 3220-3230 before we resume the ride back up.”

He adds, for much of this year, “unless we see a crisis, like the European debt crisis, we’re likely to see this steady 100-150 point trading range, but still the trend is up.” There are 1.3 fallers per riser with 1.55 billion shares traded; Golden Agri (E5H.SG) is the most active and is off 2.5% at $0.780.