KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia turned lower at the opening bell in the absence of a resolution over US debt ceiling negotiations.
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At the start of trading, Malaysia’s benchmark FBM KLCI fell 4.92 points to 1,423.62.
As Corporate Malaysia enters the final leg of its first-quarter results period, the market remains buffeted by external pressures as the impasse between policymakers in the US threatens to trigger a default in the world’s largest economy.
“Against this backdrop, our domestic stock market is expected to stay listless in the near term notwithstanding last week’s relatively resilient performance,” said Kenaga Research in its weekly outlook.
“Technically speaking, the FBM KLCI may back off from an intermediate descending trendline as the Parabolic SAR indicator is signalling a downward bias while the 50-day SMA is hovering below the 100-day SMA.
“Hence, continuing from where it left off, the FBM KLCI could pull back deeper towards our first support level of 1,395. Our immediate resistance barrier remains at 1,440,” it said.
The research firm also expects one change to the FBM KLCI’s list of component stocks at the upcoming mid-year review.
Based on last Friday’s market cap ranking, Inari Amertron may be substituted by either Malaysia Airports Holdings or Westports.
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“This comes as Inari will probably close today (being the cut-off date) in the 36th position or below (which is the threshold to trigger the omission rule) given that its existing market cap (as of last Friday) remains less than the market cap for Top Glove (ranked 35th) by a sizeable margin of RM1.36bil.
“Standing in as its replacement will be a toss between Malaysia Airports (in 28th position) and Westports (in 30th position) as the former’s market cap was barely higher than the latter by just RM85.9mil on Friday,” it said.
Looking at the performance of the blue chips in early trade, most counters were in the red with notable declines in the financial services sector.
Maybank fell seven sen to RM8.71, Public Bank lost two sen to RM3.96, CIMB dropped one sen to RM5.01 and Hong Leong Bank was down eight sen to RM19.90.
Commodities and plantations-related counters were also underwater with Press Metal shedding five sen to RM4.73, Kuala Lumpur Kepong losing four sen to RM22.62 and IOI dropping four sen to RM3.96.
Among the top traded on the broader markets, Bahvest was up 2.5 sen to 16.5 sen, Ho Wah Genting dropped 1.5 sen to nine sen and Tanco was unchanged at 51.5 sen.
DXN, which made its debut on the Main Market last Friday to a negative performance, shed a further one sen to 65.5 sen. – The Star