Singapore’s stock market has had a year worth watching. The SPDR STI ETF (SGX: ES3), which tracks the Straits Times Index (SGX: ^STI), returned 16.3% year to date. Most investors would take that gladly. But eight blue chips did better. Their total returns ran from the low-40s down to the low-20s, each ahead of the benchmark. But they did not all get there the same way. For three of them, the businesses did the pulling. For the rest, the market appears to have priced something the reported quarter did not obviously show.

Which names ran furthest ahead?

Singapore Exchange (SGX: S68) led with a total return of 43.3%. OCBC (SGX: O39) returned 36.2%, and Singapore Technologies Engineering (SGX: S63) came in at 33.7%. Then a second cluster followed: Wilmar International (SGX: F34) at 26.2%, DBS Group (SGX: D05) at 25.2%, Singapore Airlines (SGX: C6L) at 21.2%, United Overseas Bank (SGX: U11) at 20.6%, and SATS (SGX: S58) at 20.3%....