Bursa Malaysia lower on selling pressure in heavyweights, industrial counters

KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia ended lower yesterday, hurt by continued selling pressure in heavyweights and industrial product counters, amid mixed sentiment in Asian bourses, dealers said.

At 5pm, the benchmark FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI finished at 1,821.60, down 7.03 points from yesterday’s close of 1,828.63. It opened 2.61 points higher at 1,831.24.

The market barometer moved between 1,821.21 and 1,831.32 throughout the day.

Overall, the market breadth was bearish as losers outnumbered gainers by 764 to 274, while 372 counters were unchanged, 422 untraded and 32 others suspended.

Turnover slipped to 4.60 billion units valued at RM3.29 billion from Wednesday’s 4.97 billion units valued at RM2.79 billion.

Hengyuan Refining and Petron Malaysia topped the losers’ list, declining RM1.80 and 86 sen each to RM12 and RM11.28, respectively.

TNB, Petronas Gas and Genting Malaysia fell 22 sen, 62 sen and 21 sen each to RM15.60, RM17.32 and RM5.36, respectively, contributing 6.60 points towards the loss of the Composite Index.

A dealer said the local benchmark index was down due to the European Union’s approval of the draft measures to ban the use of palm oil, a major import from Southeast Asia, in motor fuels from 2021.

He said most Asian bourses were mixed as investors were digesting a series of data released by China today, including gross domestic product , which grew 6.9 per cent last year, higher than estimated target of 6.5 per cent.

Of the other heavyweights, Maybank shed two sen to to RM9.86, CIMB Group rose three sen to RM 6.80 while Public Bank and Petron as Chemicals were flat at RM 20.88 and RM8.17, respectively.

Among the actives, UMW O&G erased four sen to 34.5 sen, Sumatec eased half-a-sen to 9.5 sen, PUC reduced 1.5 sen to 28.5 sen and Sapura Energy retreated five sen to 76 sen.

The FBM Emas Index contracted 51.63 points to 13,140.10, FBMT 100 Index went down 43.59 points to 12,804.78 and the FBM Emas Shariah Index 51.4 points was weaker at 13,567.37.

The FBM 70 dipped 36.16 points to 16,384.13 and the FBM Ace dropped 122.92 points to 6,683.26.

Sector-wise, the Finance Index slipped 56.14 points to 17,190.06, Industrial Index shed 125.70 points to 3,312.65 and the Plantation Index eased 6.18 points to 8,069.05.

Main Market volume was almost unchanged at 2.87 billion units worth RM3.01 billion from 2.87 billion units worth RM2.55 billion from Wednesday.

Volume on the ACE Market narrowed to 1.25 billion shares valued at RM194.32 million from yesterday’s 1.67 billion shares valued at RM173.29 million.

Warrants’ volume increased to 468.18 million units worth RM72.76 million from 425.21 million units worth RM67.54 million previously.

Consumer products accounted for 132.18 million shares traded on the Main Market, industrial products (601.82 million), construction (114.10 million), trade and services (1.68 billion), technology (96.67 million), infrastructure (5.11 million), SPAC (4.63 million), finance (69.44 million), hotels (160,300), properties (99.91 million), plantations (54.98 million), mining (767,500), REITs (7.83 million), and closed/ fund (7,100).