KUALA LUMPUR: Petronas linked stocks led the FBM KLCI lower early Monday ahead of the OPEC meeting while the disappointing quarterly results gave more reasons for investors to take money off the table.
At 10am, the KLCI was down 4.76 points or 0.29% to 1,622.17. Turnover was 367.47 million shares valued at RM180.51mil. Decliners beat advancers four to one with 393 losers to 102 gainers.
Kenanga Investment Bank Research said the quarterly financial results released on Tuesday remained disappointing yet again as there was no outperformers at all with two-third of the 12 results releases missing forecasts.
On the outlook for the market, it said technical-wise, while there are signs that the RSI and Stochastic have begun to emerge from oversold levels, the pressured MACD histogram below the zero-line is capping the upside recovery.
“We continue to view that any retracement towards the 1,620 (S1) as good accumulation point on quality names. However, any decisive decline below the S1 level would see the benchmark index dipping towards the 1,600 (S2) level next.
“On the other hand, the KLCI would need to swiftly take out its immediate 1,640 (R1) level before it could look to gear further up towards 1,662 (R2),” it said.
Oil markets were jittery on Wednesday ahead of an OPEC meeting later in the day, with members of the producer cartel trying to thrash out an output cut to curb oversupply that has seen prices more than halve since 2014, Reuters reported.
International Brent crude futures were trading at US$46.55 per barrel at 0135 GMT, up 17 cents, or 0.37% from their last close. US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were at US$45.52 a barrel, up 29% or 0.64% from their last settlement.
Petronas Gas fell 22 sen to RM21.14 while Petronas Dagangan lost 18 sen to RM23.34.
Panasonic Malaysia skidded RM1.58 to RM33 with 5,100 shares done, which could be due to foreign selling. SAM Engineering lost 26 sen to RM6.20 and Bintulu Port 19 sen lower at RM6.30.
MSC fell 16 sen to RM3.94 and Mycron 14 sen lower at 86 sen while Choo Bee was down 13 sen to RM1.67.
DRB-Hicom fell 4.5 sen to 93.5 sen with 6.13 million shares done. It reported a net loss of RM309.6mil in the second quarter ended Sept 30, 2016 (2QFY17) in contrast with the net profit of RM3.9mil.
Public Investment Bank Research (PIVB) upgraded DRB-Hicom to Outperform as it expects recent new models launched by Proton will help improve its performance for the automotive division in the 2HFY17.
Ajinomoto jumped 42 sen to RM13.50 with 34,700 shares done as investors expected a windfall from the sale of part of its land in in Jalan Kuchai Lama.
Dutch Lady
rose 20 sen to RM55.60, PPB Group added 14 sen to RM15.86 and PBA five sen higher at RM1.19.
Win a prize this Mother's Day by subscribing to our annual plan now! T&C applies.
