Bursa Malaysia’s four-day rally comes to a halt

KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia’s four-day rally came to a halt yesterday on profit-taking correction, dealers said.

At 5pm, the benchmark FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI ended at 1,826.95, down 5.2 points from Monday’s close of 1,832.15, after opening 5.11 points better at 1,837.26.

The market barometer moved between 1,823.52 and 1,840.35 throughout the day.

A dealer, however, was upbeat that the rally mode on the local stock market was still ongoing bolstered by positive external factors.

Affin Hwang Investment Bank Vice-President/Head of Retail Research, Datuk Dr Nazri Khan Adam Khan, said the inflows of foreign funds showed that foreign investors were positioning themselves in the local stock market which has been lagging behind regional peers for many years.

“If we can keep the momentum for the rest of the year, we can be the best performer this year,” he told Bernama.

He said among the factors contributing to the rally were strong commodity and crude oil prices, improvements of the ringgit, solid global economic growth and strong performance on the Wall Street as well as regional markets.

Among heavyweights, Maybank lost two sen to RM9.83, Petronas Chemicals slipped one sen to RM8.14 and CIMB fell seven sen to RM6.75.

TNB perked 18 sen to RM15.88 while Public Bank was flat at RM20.82.

Of the actives, UMW O&G lost three sen to 42.5 sen and Sapura Energy fell four sen to 93.5 sen.

Sumatec and Borneo Oil added half-a-sen each to 6.5 sen and 9.5 sen respectively while Priceworth was flat at 31 sen.

The FBM Emas Index fell 45.18 points to 13,270.33, FBMT 100 Index shed 42.721 points to 12,903.77, FBM Emas Shariah Index declined 35.46 points to 13,771.74 and the FBM 70 was 75.43 points lower to 16,716.92.

The FBM Ace put on 11.73 points to 7,009.66.

Sector-wise, the Finance Index shed 92.17 points to 17,148.3, Industrial Index declined 23.64 points to 3,412.67 and the Plantation Index slipped 0.34 of-a-point to 8,094.73.

The overall market breadth was bearish as losers outnumbered gainers 714 to 386, while 364 counters were unchanged, 339 untraded and 20 others suspended.

Total turnover fell to 6.47 billion units worth RM4.41 billion from Monday’s 6.96 billion units worth RM4.58 billion.

Main Market volume fell to 4.41 billion units worth RM4.72 billion from 4.81 billion units worth RM4.23 billion on Monday.

Volume on the ACE Market increased to 1.18 billion shares valued at RM215.18 million from yesterday’s 1.17 billion shares valued at RM234.05 million.

Warrants volume decreased to 873.81 million units worth RM123.85 million from 964.8 million units worth RM111.98 million previously.

Consumer products accounted for 107.15 million shares traded on the Main Market, industrial products (1.08 billion), construction (158.7 million), trade and services (2.51 billion), technology (213.13 million), infrastructure (8.42 million), SPAC (7.45 million), finance (75.13 million), hotels (691,400), properties (200.55 million), plantations (42.41 million), mining (147,500), REITs (5.63 million), and closed/fund (90,300).

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