KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 4 — Shares on Bursa Malaysia closed the first day of trading this year on a weak note, dampened by negative sentiments, dealers said.

At 5pm, the benchmark FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) fell 39.14 points or 2.31 per cent to its intra-day low of 1,653.37, dragged down by selling in bluechips.

Mercury Securities head of research, Edmund Tham, attributed the day’s losses to the trading halt in the Chinese stock market following a circuit-breaker system imposed for the first time.

The trading, which was halted for 15 minutes, was suspended for the rest of the day after China’s benchmark CS1300 share index tumbled 7 per cent.

“The selling pressure came after the release of a weaker-than-expected purchasing managers’ index (PMI) that indicates a slowdown in the economy,” he told Bernama.

Tham said the geopolitical tension between Saudi Arabia and Iran also weighed on sentiment and partially contributed to the day’s weak performance.

Regional markets were also lower as Japan’s Nikkei 225 dropped 582.73 points to 18,450.98, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng slashed 587.28 points to 21,327.12, and Singapore’s Straits Times was down 46.76 points to 2,835.97.

On the local scoreboard, the FBM Emas Index gave up 232.38 points to 11,561.27, the FBMT100 Index lost 234.13 points to 11,236.44 and the FBM Emas Shariah Index fell 252.71 points to 12,547.94.

The FBM 70 trimmed 156.07 points to 12,979.08 and the FBM Ace declined 118.2 points to 6,271.04.

Sector-wise, the Industrial Index decreased 87.34 points to 3,182.46, the Finance Index dropped 257.12 points to 13,902.09 and the Plantation Index contracted 116.22 points to 7,503.42.

Market breadth was negative as decliners overwhelmed advancers 708 to 278 while 255 counters were unchanged, 484 untraded and 13 others were suspended.

Total volume rose to 1.92 billion shares worth RM1.73 billion from 1.35 billion shares valued at RM1.33 billion last Thursday.

Among actives, Instacom inched up half-a-sen to 28 sen, but Kim Tech slipped 1.5 sen to 40.5 sen and Nexgram shed one sen to 8.5 sen.

Of the heavyweights, Maybank lost 20 sen to RM8.20, Public Bank fell 24 sen to RM18.28, Petronas Chemicals trimmed 21 sen to RM7.06, and Axiata erased 11 sen to RM6.30.

TNB, despite its plan to issue US$3 billion dollar denominated sukuk, eased four sen to RM13.28 with 6.04 million shares changing hands.

Main Market volume rose to 1.08 billion units worth RM1.56 billion from 848.49 million units valued at RM1.21 billion traded on Thursday.

Turnover on the ACE Market expanded to 486.24 million shares worth RM106.17 million from 333.71 million shares valued at RM93.50 million previously.

Warrants increased to 345.26 million units worth RM69.13 million from 164.86 million units valued at RM27.99 million.

Consumer products accounted for 94.85 million shares traded on the Main Market, industrial products (268.65 million), construction (43.21 million), trade and services (387.48 million), technology (43.52 million), infrastructure (7.39 million), SPAC (38.68 million), finance (35.54 million), hotels (720,100), properties (133.59 million), plantations (22.18 million), mining (29,700), REITs (7.64 million) and closed/fund (26,700). — Bernama