KUALA LUMPUR, July 29 — Share prices continued to trend downwards at mid-afternoon today amid intense selling pressure, which saw the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) dipped below 1,800 points.

At 3pm, the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI declined by 8.82 points to 1,798.79, with the index hovering between 1,798.72 and 1,808.66.

Dealers said the downtrend was in line with weaker sentiment region-wide as well as sell-offs on selected key heavyweights led by IHH Healthcare MISC and CIMB.

IHH Healthcare went down 11 sen to RM4.03, MISC decreased 13 sen to RM5.66 and CIMB lost 12 sen to RM8.33.

Market breadth was negative with losers outpacing gainers by 535 to 144, with 277 counters unchanged, 643 untraded and 48 others were suspended.

Turnover stood at 758.24 million shares worth RM865.97 million.

The Finance Index erased 83.45 points to 17,253.78, Plantation Index fell 29.17 points to 8,376.17 and the Industrial Index eased 21.58 points to 3,057.69.

The FBM Emas Index lost 69.18 points to 12,530.86, FBMT100 fell 65.16 points to 12,274.12, FBM 70 Index decreased 97.01 points to 14,422.77 and the FBM ACE Index shed 21.84 points to 5,063.24.

Among actives, Malaysian Airlines added half-a-sen to 31 sen and Flonic Hi-Tec gained one sen to 13 sen.

China Stationery, Ingenuity Consolidated and Astral Supreme were flat at 27.5 sen, eight sen and 21.5 sen. 

In heavyweights, Maybank, Sime Darby and Petronas Chemicals each trimmed two sen to RM10.68, RM9.51 and RM6.60 respectively while Maxis fell one sen to RM7.08. — Bernama