KUALA LUMPUR, March 19 — Bursa Malaysia started the day broadly lower as it tracked Wall Street’s weaker performance overnight and on caution ahead of a decision on US interest rates later tonight.
At 9.05am, the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) dropped 15.60 points to 1,512 from Monday’s close of 1,527.81. The benchmark index opened 14.52 points lower at 1,513.29.
On the broader market, decliners led gainers 241 to 109, while 272 counters were unchanged, 1,814 untraded, and seven suspended. Turnover stood at 133.02 million shares worth RM129.23 million.
Bursa Malaysia and its subsidiaries were closed yesterday in conjunction with the Nuzul Al-Quran public holiday.
Rakuten Trade Sdn Bhd vice-president of equity research Thong Pak Leng noted that the accumulation of local stocks is subdued as illustrated by the failure to breach the 1,530 resistance level at the moment. “We anticipate the index may play catch up following an encouraging regional performance yesterday, thus expect the index to hover within the 1,525-1,535 range today,” he told Bernama.
Among heavyweight counters, Maybank and IHH Healthcare fell two sen each to RM10.40 and RM7.07, respectively, while Public Bank dropped six sen to RM4.48 and CIMB shed 24 sen to RM7.01. Tenaga Nasional was flat at RM13.56.
In active stocks, Sapura Energy and Elridge Energy were flat at 4.5 sen and 47 sen, respectively, while Nationgate declined four sen to RM1.31. SNS Network eased one sen to 43 sen and Top Glove bagged three sen to 89.5 sen.
On the index board, the FBM Emas Index trimmed 94.73 points to 11,329.75, the FBMT 100 Index weakened 99.08 points to 11,088.72 and the FBM Emas Shariah Index slipped 68.61 points to 11,015.39.
The FBM 70 Index lost 84.08 points to 16,239.67 but the FBM ACE Index gained 15.64 points to 4,706.79. By sector, the Industrial Products and Services Index edged down 0.99 of-a-point to 154.07, the Energy Index dropped 2.83 points to 732.53 and the Financial Services Index fell 205.62 points to 18,590.52.
The Plantation Index shed 18.68 points to 7,397.57. — Bernama
