KUALA LUMPUR, April 11 ― Bursa Malaysia continued lower mid-afternoon on lack of buying interest with trading dominated by lower liners and small cap counters.
At 3.01pm, the benchmark FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) stood at 1,734.21, down 5.31 points, from yesterday's close of 1,739.52.
The key index opened 0.17 of-a-point lower at 1,739.35.
Market breadth was negative as losers outpaced gainers 521 to 325 with 371 counters unchanged, 522 untraded and 15 others were suspended.
Turnover stood at 2.74 billion shares worth RM1.27 billion.
A dealer said penny stocks attracted strong buying interest of late as investors seeked profits instead of looking at fundamentals.
He said judging from yesterday's trading on Bursa Malaysia, the ratio of value to volume was 0.57 times compared with an average of 1.1 times in 2016 and 0.9 times, year to date.
“This indicated that the average price of stocks traded were below RM1,” he added.
On the scoreboard, the FBM Emas Index shed 26.65 points to 12,389.61, the FBMT100 Index gave up 27.01 points to 12,014.55 and the FBM Emas Shariah Index decreased 21.13 points to 12,868.89.
The FBM 70 gained 3.479 points to 14,742.35 while the FBM Ace fell 89.73 points to 6,155.92.
Sector-wise, the Plantation Index eased 45.3 points to 8,061.77, the Industrial Index slipped 9.68 points to 3,250.82 and the Finance Index decreased 44.779 points to 15,672.73.
Among heavyweights, Maybank eased two sen to RM8.97, Public Bank erased four sen to RM19.94, Sime Darby declined six sen to RM9.28 and Petronas Chemicals lost three sen to RM7.70.
TNB was flat at RM13.70.
Of actives, Priceworth International added four sen to 24 sen, Malayan United gained three sen to 22 sen, Olympia Industries added 1.5 sen to 17 sen and Vivocom earned half-a-sen to 16 sen while Key Alliance lost 1.5 sen to eight sen. ― Bernama
