KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia ended down on Tuesday as investors fretted over slower growth in China and the corporate earnings in the US to gauge the health of the world’s biggest economy.
Dealers said concerns over palm oil exports to the European Union also weighed on Malaysian shares. The European Commission had earlier this year decided to phase out palm-based transport fuels in its share of renewable energy after concluding that its cultivation results in excessive deforestation.
At 5pm, the FBM KLCI was down 3.43 points or 0.21% to 1,668.94 after spending the day in the negative zone. It opened 0.88 of-a-point lower at 1,671.49 this morning. The market traded within a range of 6.1 points between an intra-day high of 1,672.47 and a low of 1,666.37 during the session.
Turnover was 3.29 billion shares valued at RM2.08bil. There were 407 gainers, 450 losers and 412 counters unchanged.
In today’s session, KLCI-component stocks were mixed with 15 decliners, eight gainers and seven counters unchanged.
Over the region, most stock markets closed mixed. China shares ended down after three sessions of gains as investors fretted over slower growth in the world’s second-largest economy and the impact of the Sino-U.S. trade war, even as fresh data highlighted Beijing’s efforts to boost spending, Reuters reported.
The blue-chip CSI300 index ended down 0.5% at 3,806.84, while the Shanghai Composite Index lost 0.2% to 2,937.62 points.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index closed up 0.23% to 28,619.62. South Korea’s kospi Index ended 9.39 points or 0.45% higher to 2,091.87 points while Japan’s Nikkei 225 average ended 0.7% lower to 21,535.25.
On the local index, Petronas Chemicals led the declined with 12 sen drop to RM8.24, pushing the index down by 1.673 points . Tenaga Nasional fell 10 sen to RM13.78, dragging the index down by 0.991 points and Digi.Com shed seven sen to RM4.98, nudging the index down by 0.948 points.
Leading the advancing counters were Dutch Lady
gaining 40 sen to RM64, Lafarge Malaysia rising 21 sen to RM3.59 and Carlsberg adding 16 sen to RM24.66. Among the decliners are Panasonic Manufacturing, Kuala Lumpur Kepong and Vitrox.
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