Continued selling in heavyweights drags Bursa lower

KUALA LUMPUR: Continued selling pressure in most heavyweight counters dragged Bursa Malaysia to close sharply lower yesterday, dealers said.

At 5pm, the benchmark FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) was 14.87 points lower at 1,716.81 after moving between 1,716.81 and 1,729.64 throughout the day.

Losers thumped gainers by 552 to 292, with 254 counters unchanged, 731 untraded and 20 others suspended.

Total volume decreased to 1.65 billion units worth RM2.08 billion from Wednesday’s 1.79 billion units worth RM1.89 billion.

A dealer said Southeast Asian stock markets also trimmed previous gains, with market sentiments dampened by investor worries over the Greek debt talks.

Eurozone finance ministers accused Greece of refusing to compromise ahead of a deadline set on June 30, when an International Monetary Fund loan tranche of 1.6 billion euros comes due, he added.

Of the heavyweights, Maybank added three sen to RM9.32, Public Bank eased four sen to RM18.90, Tenaga shed 22 sen to RM12.56, Sime Darby slipped five sen to RM8.51 while Axiata was flat at RM6.48.

Among actives, AirAsia X added one sen to 22.5 sen, TMC Life Sciences Warrant B gained 16.5 sen to 17 sen, KNM Group and Frontken shed 2.5 sen each to 63 sen and 25.5 sen, respectively while Scan Associates was flat at 7.5 sen.

AirAsia X was active throughout the whole trading session today, following news on the lifting of the ban on AirAsia Philippines to fly to European Union member countries.

On the scoreboard, the FBM Emas Index was 97.95 points lower at 11,886.87, the FBMT100 Index fell 97.05 points to 11,563.38, the FBM Emas Syariah tumbled 124.29 points to 12,332.19, the FBM 70 dropped 97.31 points to 12,978.15 and the FBM Ace slid 125.04 points to 6,408.36.

On a sectoral basis, the Finance Index fell 42.38 points to 15,609.48, the Plantation Index decreased 48.26 points to 7,269.09 and the Industrial Index declined 23.87 points for 3,152.99.

Main Market volume decreased to 1.16 billion shares worth RM1.94 billion from 1.31 billion shares worth RM1.77 billion on Wednesday.

Turnover on the ACE Market fell to 336.20 million units valued at RM96.33 million from 369.46 million units valued at RM91.41 million previously.

Warrants rose to 149.83 million shares worth RM37.11 million from 105.32 million shares worth RM20.99 million previously.

Consumer products accounted for 68.76 million shares traded on the Main Market, industrial products (303.72 million), construction (42 million), trade and services (556.06 million), technology (27.73 million), infrastructure (20.78 million), SPAC (15.77 million), finance (42.56 million), hotels (1.05 million), properties (54.54 million), plantations (19.19 million), mining (20,000), REITs (12.17 million) and closed/fund (2000). — Bernama