KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 26 — 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 9:05 am, the benchmark FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) stood at 1,829.99, down 3.76 points, after opening 3.54 points lower at 1,830.21.
HwangDBS Vickers Research said Wall Street lost marginal ground last night, with major US equity barometers slipping between 0.1 per cent and 0.2 per cent at the closing bell in the absence of fresh market leads.
“Still, we reckon our Malaysian bourse may inch slightly up today,” the research house said in a note. “On the chart, the benchmark FBM KLCI could hold on to its gains by grinding its way towards the resistance threshold of 1,840 ahead.”
HwangDBS said possibly giving a lift to the overall market performance was a string of strong corporate financial results that came in yesterday evening.
“On the flip side, AirAsia X shares may be hit after its quarterly bottomline swung to a net loss of RM131 million from a net profit of RM14 million a year ago,” the research firm said.
On the scoreboard, the Finance Index lost 6.29 points to 16,549.71, the Plantation Index fell 28.41 points to 8,794.51, and the Industrial Index declined 9.2 points to 3,126.18. The FBM Emas Index was down 25.23 points to 12,649.69, the FBMT100 Index fell 26.45 points to 12,316.34, the FBM 70 shed 34.01 points to 13,784.56, while the FBM Ace improved 17.58 points to 6,670.88.
Losers outpaced gainers 104 to 103 while 162 counters were unchanged, 1,262 untraded and 33 others were suspended. Turnover stood at 85.83 million shares worth RM35.78 million.
Among actives, Minetech Resources and Luster Industries were flat at 20.5 sen and 12.5 sen respectively. Malaysia Airlines fell 1 sen to 25 sen.
As for the heavyweights, Maybank was unchanged at RM9.73, Tenaga Nasional lost 8 sen to RM11.94 while CIMB gained 1 sen to RM7.11. — Bernama
