Bursa Malaysia opened lower today amid weaker indicators from Wall Street overnight.
At 9.05am, the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) declined 3.77 points to 1,603.80 from 1,607.57 at the close yesterday.
According to Bernama, the market barometer index opened 2.70 points higher at 1,604.87.
Market breadth was negative as losers outpaced gainers by 248 to 173, while 319 counters were unchanged, 1,426 untraded and 7 others suspended.
Turnover stood at 366.08 million shares worth RM201.39 million.
According to Malacca Securities, although market sentiment is expected to be less bullish, tracking Wall Street’s decline, the local bourse may be supported by buying interest in high -income stocks ahead of the company’s quarterly earnings report.
The U.S. stock market continued to decline on Tuesday as the Dow fell 0.8% in an environment of rising Covid-19 cases, affecting a number of strong corporate earnings recently.
In Asia, stocks closed mostly lower yesterday while oil prices slipped from a month-long high on Monday on concerns about possible enforcement of sanctions in India to curb the rise in infections as well as deaths due to Covid-19.
Domestically, Malacca Securities said traders were expected to focus on plantation counters following the rise in palm crude oil prices to more than RM3,800 a tonne.
“In addition, we expect to see buying interest at other glove counters following Kossan's high-income report released yesterday amid rising daily Covid-19 cases.
"Stocks related to building materials are also in focus due to the increase in raw material prices," he said in a note today.
Most of the lower heavyweights with Press Metal remained in the negative range, declining 13 sen to RM5.13, while Axiata and Maxis, declined five sen each to RM3.95 and RM4.73, respectively.
MISC declined nine sen to RM6.71 and Digi declined four sen to RM4.21.
On the other hand, Top Glove rose four sen to RM5.44 and Supermax rose 10 sen to RM5.50.
Among active counters, Ucrest rose half -a -sen to 60 sen, Key Asic was flat at 20.5 sen, Dataprep jumped 33 sen to RM2.33 and Bina puri was flat at RM9.5 sen.
On the index board, the FBM Gold Index declined 14.45 points to 11,810.68, the FBMT 100 declined 19.09 points to 11,467.46 while the FBM 70 rose 4.14 points to 15,607.06.
FBM Emas Shariah declined 23.21 points to 13,208.87 and FBM ACE declined 10.70 points to 8,581.96.
By sector, the Plantation Index decreased 1.34 points to 6,878.69, the Financial Services Index declined 7.28 points to 15,085.87 and the Industrial Products and Services Index declined 1.02 points to 194.06.
