KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 4 — Share prices on Bursa Malaysia ended the morning session broadly lower, dragged by losses in blue chips and key heavyweights.
At the lunch break, the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) ended at 1,780.79, down 23.24 points from Thursday’s close of 1,804.03.
The benchmark index fluctuated between 1,769.8 and 1,795.89 during the morning session.
A dealer said sluggish US manufacturing data sparked renewed concerns over global growth, especially in the world’s largest economy, the United States.
“Global weak sentiment curbed risk appetite for emerging equity markets, including Bursa Malaysia,” the dealer said, adding that some local investors were still away for the Chinese New Year holidays.
Bursa Malaysia was closed yesterday as it was a public holiday in lieu of the Federal Territory Day holiday which fell on Saturday.
On the scoreboard, the Finance Index fell 104.02 points to 16,304.65, the Plantation Index decreased 68.69 points to 8,360.25 and the Industrial Index was 47.82 points lower at 3,030.67.
The FBM Emas Index gave up 151.52 points to 12,304.82, the FBMT100 Index lost 153.64 points to 12,022.22, the FBM 70 dropped 161.21 points to 13,599.84 and the FBM Ace declined 45.22 points to 5,856.11.
Market breadth was negative as losers outnumbered gainers 480 to 149, with 233 counters unchanged, 730 untraded and 17 others were suspended.
Turnover totalled 708.212 million shares worth RM943.247 million.
Among actives, KNM Group added three sen to 64.5 sen while PDZ Holdings was flat at 12 sen.
For heavyweights, both Maybank and CIMB fell seven sen each to RM9.56 and RM6.85, respectively, TNB lost 54 sen to RM11.26, Axiata Group slipped one sen to RM6.55 and Sime Darby erased 13 sen to RM8.86. — Bernama
