Bursa Malaysia opens marginally lower on cautious sentiments

KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia commenced the week with a slight decline on Monday, reflecting a sense of caution in the market following Wall Street's lackluster performance on Friday and apprehensions regarding China's economic expansion.

At 9:10 am, the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) experienced a modest decline of 1.81 points, moving from Friday's closing value of 1,445.21 to 1,443.4.

The primary index commenced with a marginal decrease of 0.32 points, opening at 1,444.89.

In the broader market context, gainers slightly outnumbered losers with 149 gainers against 143 losers, while 260 counters remained unchanged. Additionally, there were 1,722 untraded counters and 26 others suspended.

Total turnover amounted to 214.2 million units valued at RM76.63 million.

Thong Pak Leng, the Vice-President of Equity Research at Rakuten Trade Sdn Bhd, attributed Wall Street's decline on the previous Friday to profit-taking driven by robust corporate earnings reports in the United States (US) and the release of slower job data for July.

On August 1st, the credit rating agency Fitch downgraded the US debt rating by one notch, transitioning from AAA to AA+.

Speaking about the local scenario, Thong noted that despite intra-day profit-taking activities, the FBM KLCI demonstrated resilience by closing higher on Friday.

He expressed satisfaction with the local bourse's impressive performance and anticipated a more well-rounded market performance as overall volume increases.

For the current day, Thong projected that the index would likely hover within the range of 1,440 to 1,455, attributing this prediction to the sustained accumulation of blue chips contributing to a broad-based market performance.

Among the heavyweight stocks, CIMB saw a decline of two sen, settling at RM5.48, Tenaga experienced a five sen drop, closing at RM9.55, Petronas Chemicals recorded a decrease of six sen, ending at RM6.79, and IHH Healthcare slipped by one sen to RM6.00. In contrast, Maybank managed to gain one sen, reaching RM8.92.

Meanwhile, Public Bank, CelcomDigi, and Hong Leong Bank remained unchanged at RM4.12, RM4.42, and RM19.58, respectively.

In terms of active stocks, Classita and Advance Synergy each saw a one sen increase to 17 sen and 17.5 sen, respectively. On the other hand, MST Golf experienced a decrease of 3.5 sen, closing at 56 sen, while Sapura Energy and Tanco remained steady at 4.5 sen and 55.5 sen, respectively.

Moving to the index board, the FBM Emas Index decreased by 10.38 points to 10,606.99, the FBMT 100 Index saw a decline of 10.85 points to 10,300.03, and the FBM Emas Shariah Index dropped by 11.45 points to 10,860.1. Similarly, the FBM ACE Index decreased by 19.3 points to 5,234.41, and the FBM 70 Index registered a decline of 5.78 points to 13,915.38.

In terms of sectors, the Financial Services Index experienced a slight dip of 5.64 points, closing at 16,136.37, while the Industrial Products and Services Index saw a minor decrease of 0.82 of-a-point, ending at 165.68. Conversely, the Energy Index gained 3.82 points, reaching 830.18, and the Plantation Index increased by 7.86 points to 7,088.57.