KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 17 — Bursa Malaysia ended the week in red, dragged down by the selling of selected heavyweight counters, led by Top Glove and IOI Corporation.

At 5pm, the benchmark FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) dropped 6.75 points to 1,548.51 from Wednesday’s close of 1,555.26.

The index, which opened 1.09 points better at 1,556.35, moved between 1,543.08 and 1,556.74 throughout the day.

Market breadth was negative with decliners leading gainers 620 to 470, while 412 counters were unchanged, 766 untraded, and 10 others suspended.

Turnover rose to 5.13 billion units worth RM4.18 billion from 4.5 billion units worth RM3.06 billion on Wednesday.

Bursa Malaysia was closed yesterday in conjunction with Malaysia Day.

Top Glove and IOI Corporation dragged the composite index down by 3.645 points after both shed 14 sen each to RM3.06 and RM3.77, respectively.

Rakuten Trade Sdn Bhd vice-president of equity research Thong Pak Leng said the FBM KLCI ended lower for the sixth consecutive day, mainly due to selling by local institutions.

He said the benchmark index fell by 0.43 per cent, dragged down mainly by glove, banking, and plantation stocks.

"We believe the chances of a windfall tax for glove companies are low because their average selling prices (ASP) have been coming down very quickly, hence affecting their profit while the market has just overreacted.

"We reckon the selling of banking stocks was overdone as the impact from the proposed interest waiver may not be that significant on banks as it will be only for the fourth quarter of 2021,” he told Bernama.

Among the heavyweights, Maybank fell four sen to RM8.25, Petronas Chemicals slipped seven sen to RM7.94, and Press Metal Aluminium recovered six sen to RM5.80, while Public Bank rose five sen to RM4.06.

Among the actives, KNM increased half-a-sen to 26.5 sen, Fintec was flat at 2.5 sen and Dagang Nexchange bagged four sen to 80 sen.

Among the top decliners, Petronas Dagangan tumbled 76 sen to RM19.02, Nestle erased 70 sen to RM134.00, and Sam Engineering lost 48 sen to RM14.00.

On the index board, the FBM Emas Index decreased 30.03 points to 11,365.82, the FBMT 100 Index was 26.42 points easier at 11,059.86, and the FBM Emas Shariah Index contracted 63.65 points to 12,414.14.

The FBM 70 firmed up 48.92 points to 15,007.29 while FBM ACE added 5.47 points to 7,201.22.

Sector-wise, the Plantation Index trimmed 93.03 points to 6,426.42, the Industrial Products and Services Index went down 0.09 of-a-point to 199.61, and the Financial Services Index perked up 25.29 points to 15,289.80.

The Main Market volume increased to 3.38 billion shares worth RM3.8 billion from Wednesday’s 3.21 billion shares worth RM2.75 billion.

Warrants’ turnover rose to 403.95 million units valued at RM60.40 million compared to 318.65 million units valued at RM55.52 million previously.

Volume on the ACE Market widened to 1.26 billion shares worth RM310.23 million from 921.38 million shares worth RM253.22 million on Wednesday.    

Consumer products and services counters accounted for 669.31 million shares traded on the Main Market, industrial products and services (985.29 million), construction (120.73 million), technology (448.18 million), SPAC (nil), financial services (87.35 million), property (280.58 million), plantation (39.41 million), REITs (172.32 million), closed/fund (45,000), energy (403.28 million), healthcare (141.52 million), telecommunications and media (87.74 million), transportation and logistics (66.89 million) and utilities (30.95 million). — Bernama