KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia continued yesterday’s downward momentum to open lower today as sentiments failed to improve despite positive developments in US-China trade tensions.
At 9.10am, the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI eased 1.87 points to 1,588.97 after opening 0.45 point lower at 1,590.39 compared with yesterday’s close of 1,590.84.
A dealer said a much firmer improvement in sentiment would be required for Malaysian equities to push up on fresh buying interest.
“We think that the 1,590 support level is likely to give way and the supports are now lowered to the 1,580 and 1,572 levels. On the upside, the 1,600-point level is the immediate hurdle, followed by the 1,610 level,” he said.
Among heavyweights, Maybank was flat at RM8.55 and Public Bank lost two sen to RM20.34.
TNB added two sen to RM13.62, Petronas Chemicals gained one sen o RM6.89 and IHH perked six sen to RM5.79.
For actives, Iris was flat at 16 sen while Sealink lost 1.5 sen to 29 sen.
Icon Offshore and Kanger inched up half-a-sen to 6.5 sen and eight sen respectively while K-Star added one sen to 11.5 sen.
On the scoreboard, the FBM Emas Index eased 1.8 points to 11,226.51 and the FBMT 100 Index was 1.28 points lower at 11,061.41 while the FBM Emas Shariah Index edged up 24.51 points to 11,765.43.
The FBM Ace went up 6.92 points to 4,499.89 and the FBM 70 jumped 46.869 points to 13,914.81.
Sector-wise, the Financial Services Index fell 59.489 points to 15,410.69 but the Plantation Index climbed 3.48 points to 6,774.86 and the Industrial Products and Services Index was 0.44 point higher at 147.54.
On the broader market, losers surpassed gainers 136 to 124, with 159 counters unchanged, 1,558 untraded and 14 others suspended.
Turnover stood at 97.5 million units worth RM44.31 million.
The physical price of gold as at 9.30am stood at RM201.56 per gramme, up RM1.34 from RM200.22 at 5pm yesterday. — Bernama
