Welcome to the latest edition of top stock market highlights. Singapore’s inflation rate Singapore’s core inflation rate for February has not budged from the 5.5% logged in January this year. This level of inflation remains the highest since November 2008 but was still lower than the 5.8% forecast by a Reuter’s poll of economists. Services inflation declined month on month but the drop was offset by higher inflation for retail, electricity, and gas. The good news is that overall inflation came in at 6.3%, down 0.3 percentage points from the 6.6% reported in January. The outlook has not changed much for the rest of 2023. Core inflation should remain high for the first quarter of this year and stay elevated through the first half before easing somewhat. Overall and core inflation for this year is expected to average between 5.5% to 6.5% and between 3.5% to 4.5%, respectively. If the effects of the GST hike are excluded, the rate then drops to between 4.5% to 5.5% and between 2.5% to 3.5%....