PETALING JAYA: The local bourse closed higher on Tuesday, but that did not mask the weak broader market and losses experienced by second liner stocks.
At 5pm, the 30-stock index was up 3.74 points, or 0.21% to 1,781.65, on buying support for selected blue chips.
About 2.09 billion shares, valued at RM2.25bil, changed hands. Losers outnumbered gainers by 602 to 269 while 390 counters were unchanged.
Although the second liner stocks and technology-based counters saw some losses during the early part of trading, the losses were limited. Among the actively traded were Frontken Corp, Dagang Nexchange
, Compugates Holdings, Aemulus Holdings, Kronologi Asia and Priceworth International.
Frontken regained some losses at market close. The counter fell 3.03% to 34 sen with 158.16 million shares traded, making it the most heavily traded counter today.
Dagang NeXchange, the second most heavily traded counter with 82.6 million traded, closed 0.5 sen lower at 51.5 sen.
Aemulus shed 1.5 sen to 63 sen, Kronologi Asia dropped 3.41%, or three sen to 85 sen, Compugates fell 14.29% to three sen, while Priceworth declined 2.22% to 21.5 sen.
Among the major losers, Petron Malaysia lost 41 sen to RM9.30, MSC shed 32 sen to RM3.80, Aeon Credit was down 24 sen at RM12.88 and KESM declined 22 sen to RM14.78.
On the other hand, Pentamaster gained 20 sen to RM4.40, PLB Engineering was up 16 sen to RM2.37 and Kossan added 15 sen to RM7.30.
Maybank was one the mover among the KLCI stocks, pushing the 30-stock index up 1.7466 points. The bank rose 10 sen to RM9.80, CIMB added eight sen to RM6.76 pushing the index up by 1.1978 while Axiata rose three sen to RM4.86, nudging the index up by 0.4465.
Meanwhile, Asian stocks were mixed as investors awaited for more clues on global demand and U.S. interest-rate policy while oil extended losses.
The MSCI Asia Pacific Index swung between gains and losses in a relatively quiet start to the week for markets ahead of Friday’s U.S. inflation data. Japan’s Nikkei Stock Average shed 0.3%, the Shanghai Composite Index gained 0.07%, South Korea’s Kospi fell 0.17% and the Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong was up 0.59%.
European equities edged lower on Tuesday with pan-European STOXX 600 index down 0.1%, Britain’s FTSE 100 was also down 0.1% and Germany’s DAX traded flat.
Reuters reported that oil prices steadied on Tuesday after news of lower crude supplies from Saudi Arabia offset higher production from other large exporters including the United States.
Benchmark Brent crude was up 22 cents at US$52.59 a barrel while WTI crude oil rose was 25 cents higher at US$49.64 per barrel.
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