Bursa Malaysia ends lower amid holiday-shortened week

KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia ended lower on Tuesday amid muted trading as investors continued to stay on the sidelines due to the holiday-shortened week, a dealer said.

At 5 pm, the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) shed 3.60 points to end at its intraday low of 1,450.78 from Friday's close of 1,454.38.

The FBM KLCI opened 0.30 of-a-point easier at 1,454.08 and hit its day’s high of 1,456.66 thereafter before trending downwards towards closing.

In the broader market, losers outpaced gainers 454 to 376, while 447 counters were unchanged, 1,028 untraded and 15 others suspended.

Turnover eased to 2.91 billion units worth RM1.96 billion from 2.97 billion units worth RM1.84 billion on Friday

Apex Securities Bhd head of research Kenneth Leong said the local market was also dragged down by weakness in more than two-thirds of the key index constituents today.

"Going forward, we expect the downward bias consolidation to persist in view of the lack of fresh leads,” he told Bernama.

"Given that market activities appear to be tepid, we reckon that any potential recovery will be limited for the time being. Still, we do not discount for any potential year-end window dressing in the final trading days of 2023," he said.

Meanwhile, Leong noted that investors would be keeping a close tab on Malaysia's Producer Price Index data to be released tomorrow.

Among the heavyweights, Maybank was flat at RM8.89, Tenaga Nasional added one sen to RM10.00, while Public Bank lost one sen to RM4.24, CIMB slipped two sen to RM5.78 and Petronas Chemicals dipped three sen to RM7.19.

Of the actives, Minetech rose two sen to 15.5 sen, Sarawak Cable climbed eight sen to 28 sen, while Mercury Securities slid eight sen to 55 sen, Bina Puri and Leform erased one sen to 8.5 sen and 41 sen, respectively.