KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia’s equity market and the ringgit weakened at the midday break on Monday on extended selling by foreign funds as Southeast Asian markets, South Korea and Taiwan fell.
At 12.30pm, the KLCI was down 8.73 points or 0.55% to 1,580.43, dragged down by losses in Sime Darby and Petronas Dagangan and Petronas Chemicals.
Turnover on Bursa Malaysia was 982.38 million shares valued at RM698.28mil. Decliners beat advancers 379 to 232 while 268 counters were unchanged.
The ringgit weakened against the US dollar to 4.3138 from previous 4.2600 while it was lower against the pound sterling at 6.5515 versus 6.4951 while it was at 3.0241 to the Singapore dollar from 3.0082.
Crude palm oil for third month delivery slipped RM2 to RM2,011 per tonne, weighing down the plantations.
US light crude oil fell 18 cents to US$45.87 and Brent 21 cents lower at RM49.40.
China's main indexes rose on Monday in the first trading after a two-day holiday during which further restrictions on futures trading were announced, Reuters reported. Financials were broadly down, likely reflecting the move to raise the cost of futures purchases, but most other sectors were up at midday.
At Bursa Malaysia, Petronas Daganagan fell 30 sen to RM21.16, Petronas Chemicals 11 sen to RM5.90 but Petronas Gas bucked the trend to added 14 sen to RM21.46. SapuraKencana fell three sen to RM1.72.
Among the plantation heavyweight, Sime Darby fell 18 sen to RM7.37 and erased 1.88 points from the KLCI after the outlook on its debt ratings were revised to negative by Moody’s due to its high debt level.
Far East lost 50 sen to RM7, KL Kepong and PPB Group were 12 sen lower to RM20.80 and RM15.10 while IOI Corp shed three sen to RM3.87.
Other decliners were UMW, down 25 sen to RM7.75, Tenaga lost 10 sen to RM10.98 but Genting Bhd
added eight sen to RM6.99.
MRCB was flat at RM1 after last Friday’s rally when the group and joint venture partnet George Kent were picked to the be the project delivery partner for the RM9bil LRT3.
AirAsia shed 0.5 sen to 93 sen as the recent rebound weakened due to the overall weak market sentiment.
Among the banks, Maybank fell five sen to RM8.32, CIMB four sen to RM4.71 and Hong Leong Bank eihght sen to RM13.16 but Public Bank gained 10 sen to RM17.78.
Puncak Niaga rose 17 sen to RM2.69 and its warrants, Puncak_WB added 13 sen to RM1.74 while KPS gained 12 sen to RM1.30 ahead of the signing of the Selangor water agreement on Tuesday.
VS Industry was the top gainer, adding 29 sen to RM6.42 as investors were upbeat on its outlook. Tecnic added 25 sen to RM1.15 and SAM Engineering 22 sen to RM5.41.
Among the key regional markets,
Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 0.13% to 17,816.16;
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index rose 0.22% to 20,885.74;
Shanghai’s Composite Index rose 0.88% to 3,187.82;
Taiwan’s Taiex fell 0.27% to 7,979.40;
South Korea’s Kospi fell 0.06% to 1,884.93;
Singapore’s Straits Times Index fell 0.47% to 2,850.39
Spot gold rose 74 cents to US$1,122.60.
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