Bursa Malaysia closes lower

KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia finished lower yesterday as foreign fund managers reduced their positions in the emerging markets, including Malaysia, for the second half of this year, a dealer said.

At 5 pm, the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI, which opened higher yesterday, finished at 1,755.63, down 1.64 points, after moving between 1,753.96 and 1,759.85 throughout the day.

The index opened 2.58 points better at 1,759.85 at 9am from Tuesday’s close of 1,757.27.

Market breadth was negative with losers outpacing winners by 465 to 373, with 381 counters unchanged, 609 untraded and 21 others suspended.

Total volume fell to 1.72 billion shares worth RM2.01 billion from 2.17 billion shares worth RM2.29 billion.

Inter-Pacific Securities Head of Research, Pong Teng Siew, said foreign fund managers were slowly selling stocks in the emerging markets in the second half of the year.

“These investors are harvesting profits … overall, the valuations of emerging markets as well as Malaysia were on the uptrend since the beginning of this year, so they are clearing off their positions,” he said.

Among index-linked counters, Maybank eased two sen at RM9.62, Tenaga dropped four sen to RM14.08 and CIMB erased 11 sen to RM6.31. Public Bank was flat at RM20.36.

Of the actives, FrontKN added two sen to 38.6 sen, MLab edged up one sen to 22 sen and MPay increased two sen to 26 sen. BornOil, however, eased half-a-sen to 10.5 sen.

The FBM Emas Index declined by 17.75 points to 12,516.72, FBM Emas Shariah Index fell by 24.59 points to 12,703.76 and the FBMT 100 Index dropped 17.08 points to 12,158.95.

The FBM 70 eased 42.46 points to 14,904.40. The FBM Ace, however, rose by 7.46 points to 6,809.02.

Sector-wise, the Industrial Index slipped 2.88 points to 3,266.43, Plantation Index dipped 1.39 points to 7,871.50 and the Finance Index erased 41.23 points to 16,655.33.

The Main Market turnover slipped to 1.21 billion shares worth RM1.89 billion from 1.43 billion shares worth RM2.13 billion on Wednesday.

Warrants fell to 89.09 million units valued at RM8.87 million from 211.54 million units valued at RM17.26 million previously.

Volume on the ACE Market was down to 414.26 million shares worth RM102.42 million from 522.91 million shares worth RM137.89 million previously.

Consumer products accounted for 48.94 million shares traded on the Main Market, industrial products (312.86 million), construction (121.73 million), trade and services (471.26 million), technology (62.59 million), infrastructure (13.51 million), SPAC (806,000 million), finance (59.48 million), hotels (5.92 million), properties (93.86 million), plantations (13.79 million), mining (10,700), REITs (5.28 million) and closed/fund (nil).

For further information on stocks and prices, please visitwww.bursamalaysia.com.