KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 27 — Share prices on Bursa Malaysia opened lower on lack of fresh buying interest, dragged down by losses in heavyweights and a weak lead from Wall Street.

As at 9:10am, the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) was 21.05 points down to 1,781.52 points after opening at 1,794.16 points.

HwangDBS Vickers Research said key US stock indices fell between 2.0 per cent and 2.1 per cent on Friday as sentiments were hit by the sell-down in various emerging market currencies and concerns over the fragile China economic outlook.

“On the local front, Malaysian equities could come under renewed selling pressures today on weak external backdrop, with the benchmark index testing the psychological mark of 1,800-level.

“Yinson, which has proposed a rights issue to raise as much as RM500 million and a one-into-two share split corporate exercise, will probably attract added interest today as well as Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd as it is scheduled to release its latest quarterly results around lunch time,” the research house said in a note today.

Market breadth was negative as losers trounced gainers 405 to 26, with 114 counters unchanged, 1,041 untraded and 16 others were suspended.           

Turnover stood at 133.163 million shares worth RM105.57 million.              

Among actives, Sumatec lost half-a-sen to 30 sen, Iris and Asian Pac eased one sen each to 40 sen and 20.5 sen, respectively, while Globaltec and Hubline were unchanged at 6.0 sen and 5.5 sen, respectively.

As for heavyweights, Maybank fell 19 sen to RM9.46, TNB shed 48 sen to RM11, CIMB lost 7.0 sen to RM6.83, Axiata was down 4.0 sen to RM6.53 and Sime Darby was 5.0 sen lower at RM9.

On the scoreboard, the Industrial Index lost 25.04 points to 3,032.93 points, the Plantation Index fell 108.52 points to 8,387.66 points and the Finance Index slid 143.85 points to 16,268.23 points.       

The FBM Emas Index slipped 148.14 points to 12,320.22 points, the FBMT100 Index lost 147.53 points to 12,033.75 points, the FBM 70 eased 187.71 points to 13,638.66 points and the FBM Ace erased 77.91 points to 5,860.6 points. — Bernama