Bursa Malaysia continues downtrend in early trade
KUALA LUMPUR: Share prices continued its downtrend this morning on lack of direction and in the absence of global leads.
Locally, traders mostly abstained from taking up positions ahead of the long-weekend, beginning Thursday.
At 9.06am, the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) was 2.44 points easier at 1,767.05 after opening 2.62 points easier at 1,766.87. The index finished at 1,769.49 points on Monday.
On the broader market, losers led gainers 125 to 68 with 136 counters unchanged, 1,495 untraded and 46 others were suspended.
Regionally, equity markets were mixed, with Hong Kong's Hang Seng up 0.05% at 27,863.29, Japan's Nikkei 225 was 0.57% lower at 19,339.29, Korea's Kospi was down 0.87% to 2,349.58 while Singapore's Straits Times perked 0.25% at 3,267.62.
In a note, Public Bank Investment Bhd said trading today would be influenced by global stock markets, which got off to a mixed start this week with Wall Street and the US dollar remaining under pressure following the absence of monetary policy clues by Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen at the Jackson Hole symposium last week.
"Gasoline prices rose and oil slumped as Hurricane Harvey shut down refineries in Texas are among the reason that will also impact the market," it said.
Most of the heavyweights were flat this morning, however, IHH gained four sen to RM5.99, GenM added three sen to RM5.66, PBB advanced 10 sen to RM16.8 while CIMB and AMMB both rose one sen each to RM6.79 and RM4.44, respectively.
Among losers, TimeCom shed 26 sen to RM9.4, Seacera reduced 17 sen to 97 sen, Tongherr and UMW both lost 14 sen each to RM3.5 and RM5.61, respectively.
The FBM Emas Index fell 22.78 points to 12,575.80 and the FBMT 100 Index eased 21.46 points to 12,241.08 and the FBM Emas Syariah Index lost 32.83 points to 12,745.52.
The FBM Ace decreased 5.05 points to 6,603.95 and the FBM 70 was 43.43 points lower at 15,016.69.
Sector-wise, the Industrial Index rose 0.83 of-a-point to 3,204.82 while the Plantation Index erased 5.28 points to 7,836.58 and the Finance Index eased 13.36 points to 16,704.66.
The physical price of gold as at 9.30am stood at RM175.01 per gramme, up RM2.89 from RM172.12 at 5pm yesterday. — Bernama