KUALA LUMPUR, April 18 — Bursa Malaysia will likely to see cautious trading next week with the composite index to stay around the 1,400 psychological support level amid mild profit-taking, said Bank Islam Malaysia Bhd chief economist Dr Mohd Afzanizam Abdul Rashid.
He said investors would want to lock in their gains especially given the recent sell-off.
“It (index) should linger around this level (1,400) next week as investors would weigh the incoming weak economic data and hope for a reopening of the economy.
“This include the weekly jobless claims in the United States, Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) indices (US, United Kingdom, Eurozone, Japan), US Consumer Sentiment Index and China’s central bank’s decision on its one-year loan prime rate and five-year loan prime rate.
“So these are the indicators that will be announced next week. Chances are, they will remain week,” he told Bernama.
Mohd Afzanizam said the decline in the number of new infection cases of Covid-19 are fuelling hopes that the economy would reopen quite soon.
However, he said fears of possible relapse in the pandemic infection would continue to be a concern given the fact that any vaccines or antibody for the Covid-19 virus have yet to be discovered.
“Even health experts are not too keen to reopen the economy prematurely.
“In that sense, there is always a reason for the equities market to pull back and some investors would want to pocket their gains along the way,” he elaborated.
For the week just ended, Bursa Malaysia started lower due to the bearish mode brought by the prevailing uncertainty in the oil market, rating downgrade by Fitch Ratings on two Malaysian banks and warning of a possible delay in capital expenditure by the oil majors.
Momentum, however, picked up on Tuesday following the release of trade data from China as well as growing optimism that Covid-19 infections have begun to plateau in some of the worst-hit areas globally.
Gains continued after positive remark by the International Monetary Fund, which projected Malaysia’s real gross domestic product (GDP) to grow at a rate of nine per cent next year, the fastest among the Asean-5 countries which are expected to see an average GDP growth of 7.8 per cent.
Besides Malaysia, Asean-5 includes Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam, which are set to expand by 8.2 per cent, 6.1 per cent, 7.6 per cent and seven per cent, respectively.
On a Friday-to-Friday basis, key index FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) rose 49.84 points to 1,407.34 from 1,357.50 in the previous week.
On the scoreboard, the FBM Emas Index surged 382.89 points to 9,774.94, the FBMT 100 Index increased 368.09 points to 9,656.75 and the FBM Emas Shariah Index jumped 474.41 points to 10,837.52.
The FBM 70 climbed 548.83 points to 11,563.58 and the FBM ACE Index advanced 485.85 points to 4,502.88.
Sector-wise, the Financial Services Index garnered 368.04 points to 12,646.95, the Industrial Products and Services Index added 9.52 points to 119.02 and the Plantation Index gained 88.46 to 6,336.11.
Weekly turnover decreased to 24.59 billion units worth RM12.0 billion from 26.39 billion units worth RM12.56 billion recorded last Friday.
Main Market volume narrowed to 16.56 billion shares worth RM10.76 billion versus 19.51 billion shares valued at RM11.43 billion.
Warrants turnover was slightly lower at 1.66 billion units worth RM291.51 million from 1.77 billion units worth RM370.16 million.
The ACE Market volume, however, surged to 6.36 billion shares valued at RM947.27 million compared with 5.01 billion shares valued at RM760.68 million. — Bernama
