KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 5 — The ringgit continues to trend lower on today’s opening session with investors anticipating foreign exchange trading to be cautious as concern over US-China trade war heightened. 

At 9.05am, the ringgit stood at 4.1560/1590 from Friday’s closing of 4.1550/1600.

VM Markets Pte Ltd managing partner Stephen Innes said worries over the trade war would be reflected in currency market price action this week.

“The trade war risk will likely cause a further weakening in the renminbi performance and by extension could weaken ringgit and it is a very tight correlation,” he told Bernama.

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He, however, believed that the Chinese government would take measures to safeguard the currency, hence capping the ringgit’s weakness early in the week.

“One of the pressing matters for Malaysia is, how much pressure does trade war escalation put on oil prices? and I think trader will take a very cautious this week,” he added.

Overall, the ringgit was also traded lower against a basket of major currencies.

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It slid against the Singapore dollar to 3.0182/0214 from 3.0168/0215 on Friday and weakened against the yen to 3.9071/9103 from 3.8864/8922.

Vis-a-vis the pound, the local unit fell to 5.0579/0632 from 5.0379/0457 and it depreciated against the euro to 4.6223.6273 from 4.6104/6176 last Friday. — Bernama