KUALA LUMPUR: Stocks on Bursa Malaysia put up a lacklustre performance early Friday in the absence of strong institutional leads ahead of the deluge of corporate results while key Asian markets took a breather.
At 9.30am, the KLCI was down 0.47 point or 0.03% to 1,707.12. Turnover was 258.09 million shares valued at RM99.65mil. There were 195 gainers, 174 losers and 263 counters unchanged.
Asian stock markets took a breather on Friday from their recent surge as investors took profits, while the dollar inched up after Thursday's slide and optimism over possible renewed supply cuts by OPEC lifted oil prices, Reuters reported.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan pulled back 0.2%, on track to end the week up 1.2%, its fourth straight week of gains.
US crude added 0.1% to US$53.43 a barrel in early Asian trade, but is headed for a decline of 0.8% for the week.
Kenanga Investment Bank Research, in its comments on the technical outlook for the stock market, said on the chart, the KLCI was taking a breather after its recent technical gap up last week.
“The rolling over of daily RSI and Stochastic from their overbought territory are implying weakness among the bulls, hinting of further consolidation play in the making.
“Thus, we reckon that the KLCI is likely to end the week flat within 1,700-1,710 today, where resistance levels are still found at 1,729 (R1)/1,744 (R2) and support tied at 1,700 (S1)/1,680 (S2),” it added.
Public Bank lost 10 sen to RM19.98, Genting Bhd five sen to RM8.75 and Aeon Credit was down four sen to RM15.60.
KESM fell 12 sen to RM9.51, MFCB eight sen to RM2.60 and LiiHen four sen lower at RM3.31.
YFG jumped 1.5 sen to six sen with 34 million shares done. It bagged a RM245mil contract for the 1Malaysia People's Housing Programme (PR1MA) houses in Pedas, Rembau, Negeri Sembilan.
DneX added 1.5 sen to 32 sen with 18.97 million shares done. DneX is building a new back-end system for Bukit Megah Sdn Bhd for the latter's rehiring programme of illegal foreign workers.
DneX would be paid RM30 per transaction of “eWork Permit”, which is the name of the new back-end system to be set up for Bukit Megah’s rehiring operations, according to CIMB Equities Research.
Among the consumer stocks, Nestle fell 26 sen to RM76.10 with 200 shares done. BAT was up 48 sen to RM49.26, Carlsberg gained 22 sen to RM14.34 and Heineken 14 sen higher at RM16.72.
Rex added seven sen to RM1.88, BIMB gained six sen to RM4.48 and Scientex five sen higher at RM7.13.