Bursa Malaysia ends week on an upbeat mode

Bursa Malaysia ended the week on an upbeat mode following the Budget 2020 tabling as announcements were well received by market participants, signalling the country’s economic direction, said a dealer.

At 5pm, the benchmark FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) rose 4.97 points to 1,556.84 compared with Thursday’s close of 1,551.87.

The index, which opened 0.91 points weaker at 1,550.96, moved between 1,550.96 and 1,558.26 throughout the day.

Market breadth was positive as gainers trumped losers 539 to 308, with 753 counters unchanged, 415 untraded and 52 others suspended.

Turnover widened to 2.33 billion shares worth RM1.6 billion from 2.23 billion shares worth RM1.52 billion yesterday.

Philip Capital Management senior vice-president (investment) Nazri Khan Adam Khan said on the technical front, although he saw a positive signal in Oct 7’s “Bullish Harami” candlestick pattern, no firm upside follow-through was sighted in the FBM KLCI.

“Instead, the local bourse dipped and negated this pattern.

“Technically speaking, the bulls are still struggling to take the control from the bears and we expect the weak performance to be extended further.

“As long as the index is unable to return firmly above 1,600 points, we opine the current bearish sentiment has not reached its limit yet,” he told Bernama.

Looking forward, Nazri advised investors to be more alert in their trading decision-making process.

“To the downside, our immediate support is at 1,530 points followed by the 1,500-point threshold.

“Conversely, we set the immediate resistance at 1,570 points, while the strong resistance is seen at around 1,600 points,” said Nazri.

Among the heavyweights, Maybank, PChem and Digi rose five sen each to RM8.44, RM7.23 and RM4.69 respectively, while PBBank declined 10 sen to RM19.08 and IHH decreased two sen to RM5.65.

As for the actives, Sapura Energy improved one sen to 27 sen, while Bumi Armada, Jaks Resources and MTAG Group added two sen to 38.5 sen, 93.5 sen and 45.5 sen respectively.

The FBM Emas Index improved 57.15 points to 11,077.81, the FBMT 100 Index increased 53.55 points to 10,895.44 and the FBM Emas Shariah Index was 74.63 points stronger at 11,716.37.

The FBM 70 gained 145.54 points to 13,943.97 and the FBM ACE added 36.00 points to 4,619.13.

Sector-wise, the Financial Services Index was up 29.73 points at 14,990.33, the Industrial Products & Services Index was 0.68 point better at 150.43, while the Plantation Index eased 2.16 points to 6,540.89

Main Market volume increased to 1.44 billion units worth RM1.4 billion from Thursday’s 1.23 billion units worth RM1.37 billion.
Warrants turnover widened to 464.37 million units worth RM76.03 million from 385.79 million units worth RM63.06 million previously.
Volume on the ACE Market trimmed to 427.27 million shares worth RM125.42 million from 614.16 million shares worth RM93.19 million on Thursday.
Consumer products and services accounted for 176.32 million shares traded on the Main Market, industrial products and services (225.16 million), construction (143.85 million), technology (119.92 million), SPAC (nil), financial services (26.14 million), property (111.00 million), plantations (21.46 million), REITs (6.8 million), closed/fund (14,600), energy (432.11 million), healthcare (13.6 million), telecommunications and media (106.19 million), transportation and logistics (41.14 million), and utilities (17.74 million).

- Bernama