Bursa Malaysia continued its losses yesterday after opening high for a while this morning, in line with mixed performance on other regional bourses.
According to traders, the movement of Asian stock market transactions turned out to be quite cautious with divided sentiment between confidence in the launch of the Covid-19 vaccine as well as the recovery of the global economy and fears of an increase in pandemic transmission.
At 9.10am, the benchmark index of the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) declined 3.17 points to 1,671.18 from 1,674.35 when it closed on Thursday afternoon.
Bernama reported that this morning, the key index opened 2.49 points to 1,676.84.
The overall market price movement saw losers outpacing gainers by 269 to 252 while 383 counters were unchanged, 1,263 untraded and 47 others suspended.
Turnover was 553.42 million units worth RM189.27 million.
In a note today, Malacca Securities Sdn Bhd opined that with the overnight increase on Wall Street, it is very likely that buying support will also overflow into the local market after declining yesterday.
"Traders will continue to expand their interests behind the news on the Kuala Lumpur-Singapore High Speed Rail (HSR) project," he said.
The firm added that the upcoming tender for phase one of the Rasau water treatment plant worth RM4 billion will also boost interest in transactions among water-related counters.
"Meanwhile, some commodities such as crude oil, crude palm oil and gold have been seen to be quite resilient in the past few sessions and transaction interest should also be monitored in these sectors," he added.
Among heavyweights, Maybank declined four sen to RM8.66, Public Bank and Top Glove declined two sen to RM21.48 and RM6.68 respectively, Petronas Chemicals added two sen to RM7.58, while Tenaga was unchanged at RM10. 80.
The healthiest stocks, from active stocks, Seacera warrants rose 1.5 sen to 2.5 sen, Bintai Kinden declined 2.5 sen to 79 sen, Inix and Hiap Teck Venture declined three sen to 35 sen and 41 sen, respectively, while Techna- X did not change at 18.5 cents.
On the index board, the FBM Emas Index eased 7.68 points to 12,024.03, the FBMT 100 Index declined 13.39 points to 11,780.81 and the FBM Emas Syariah Index declined 9.27 points to 13,409.01.
FBM 70 added 17.61 points to 15,385.45 while FBM ACE added 29.85 points to 10,633.11.
Meanwhile, the Industrial Products and Services Index rose 0.37 points to 176.11, the Plantation Index fell 45.21 points to 7,384.17, but the Financial Services Index rose 7.85 points to 15,734.06.
