Rakuten Trade Sdn Bhd equity research vice-president Thong Pak Leng said reports of strong corporate earnings in the US last Friday led to some profit-taking on Wall Street. There were also some concerns over China’s economic growth.
The benchmark Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) reacted by shaving off 0.32 of a point from its close of 1,445.21 points last Friday at the start of trading this morning, and retreated further to 1,443.4 points 10 minutes later.
However, Thong told Bernama, the index could rise up to 1,455 points today as a broad-base accumulation of blue chips is expected to persist.
He said the FBM KLCI’s strong performance last Friday indicated that it was still resilient despite the intra-day profit-taking activities.
“So far, the local bourse’s performance has been impressive as we wait for the overall volume to spike, showing a more rounded market performance,” he said, adding that the index is likely to hover within the 1,440 to 1,455-point range.
On the broader market, gainers edged past losers 149 versus 143, while 260 counters were unchanged, 1,722 were not traded and 26 others were suspended. The turnover stood at 214.2 million units worth RM76.63 million.
Among the heavyweights, CIMB shed two sen to RM5.48, Tenaga eased five sen to RM9.55, Petronas Chemicals gave up six sen for RM6.79 and IHH Healthcare slipped a sen to RM6, while Maybank added a sen to RM8.92.
Public Bank, CelcomDigi and Hong Leong Bank were flat at RM4.12, RM4.42 and RM19.58 respectively.
Of the actives, Classita and Advance Synergy added a sen each to 17 sen and 17.5 sen respectively, MST Golf lost 3.5 sen to 56 sen, while Sapura Energy and Tanco were flat at 4.5 sen and 55.5 sen respectively.
On the index board, the FBM Emas Index went down 10.38 points to 10,606.99, the FBMT 100 Index fell 10.85 points to 10,300.03, the FBM Emas Shariah Index decreased 11.45 points to 10,860.1, the FBM ACE Index erased 19.3 points to 5,234.41, and the FBM 70 Index slid 5.78 points to 13,915.38.
Sector-wise, the financial services index eased 5.64 points to 16,136.37 and the industrial products and services index trimmed 0.82 of-a-point to 165.68, while the energy index gained 3.82 points to 830.18 and the plantation index increased 7.86 points to 7,088.57.