However, trading was quiet due to the Christmas and New Year holidays.

West Texas Intermediate crude closed at US$61.72 (Bt1,857.80) per barrel, up by 4 cents due to a decrease in US crude oil stocks and the number of oil rigs.

“The index is likely to move sideways to sideways up. The impact from contracts in the futures market caused the market to fluctuate. We still expect the market to gain from LTF & RMF inflows and window dressing speculation,” he said.

“If we look at statistics in the past five years, the opportunity for Thai stocks to rise was 80 per cent, with an average return of +0.44 per cent.”

He suggested that investors should sell stocks to make a profit when their stocks come close to a difficult point and buy it back when the price is weak.

Recommended outstanding stocks in January include AP, Intuch, IRPC, KKP, Susco, TVO, and VNT.