KUALA LUMPUR, July 24 — Bursa Malaysia closed slightly lower today amid a sluggish performance in line with the poor performance on regional markets.

At 5pm, the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) finished at 1,720.76, down 1.68 points, after fluctuating between 1,712.49 and 1,721.45 throughout the day.

Affin Hwang Investment Bank Vice-President and Head of Retail Research Datuk Dr Nazri Khan Adam Khan said the local benchmark had fallen below the crucial 20-, 50- and 200-day moving average as the regional markets continued to be dampened by the uninspiring performance on Wall Street.

“The lack of domestic catalyst had led the trading volume to decline, implying that most retail investors preferred to remain on the sidelines,” he told Bernama.

On the scoreboard, the FBM Emas Index declined eight points to 11,892.16, the FBMT100 Index eased 9.73 points to 11,559.22 and the FBM Syariah contracted 5.45 points to 12,345.67.

The FBM 70 went down 4.95 points to 12,859.79 while the FBM Ace jumped 74.15 points to 6,556.7.

On a sectoral basis, the Finance Index lost 6.75 points to 15,548.36, the Plantation Index shed 15.55 points to 7,424.21 while the Industrial Index went up 6.28 points to 3,182.52.

Gainers edged losers by 423 to 416, with 305 counters unchanged, 667 untraded and 19 others suspended.

Total volume slipped to 1.74 billion units valued at RM1.50 billion from Thursday’s 1.76 billion units valued at RM1.68 billion.

Among actives, 1Utopia added one sen to 4.5 sen, Iris gained 1.5 sen to 29 sen, LCTH advanced 5.5 sen to 70 sen, Vsolar earned half-a-sen to 13 sen and Denko improved three sen to 44 sen.

Of the heavyweights, Maybank and Sime Darby perked four sen each to RM9.23 and RM8.48 respectively.

Public Bank and TNB eased two sen each to RM19 and RM12.28 respectively and Axiata slipped one sen to RM6.36.

Main Market volume fell to 1.05 billion shares worth RM1.33 billion from yesterday’s 1.18 billion shares worth RM1.53 billion.

Turnover on the ACE Market expanded to 449.34 million shares worth RM92.97 million from 288.88 million shares valued at RM83.79 million.

Warrants decreased to 246.06 million units worth RM75.56 million from 288.87 million units worth RM73.78 million previously.

Consumer products accounted for 157.05 million shares traded on the Main Market, industrial products (272.04 million), construction (101.12 million), trade and services (320.78 million), technology (58.99 million), infrastructure (11.96 million), SPAC (2.85 million), finance (38.67 million), hotels (517,200), properties (74.82 million), plantations (6.5 million), mining (6,000), REITs (6.03 million), and closed/fund (127,200). — Bernama