Chartists have mixed views on small-cap stocks and some point to technical indicators as showing an overbought indicator on some 90% of the small-cap stocks on Bursa Malaysia.
KUALA LUMPUR: Trading on Bursa Malaysia on Tuesday remained firmly focused on second- and lower-liner stocks while the bellwhether FBM KLCI steadies.
Investors on the local bourse continued to participate in short-term trading of lower-liner stocks, lifting volume to nearly 1.14 billion shares worth some RM804.98mil at 12 noon. The benchmark index was little changed at 1,778 points. The broader market was weak, with decliners beating advancers 131 to 638 while 308 counters were unchanged.
Among the actively traded were Frontken Corp, Dagang Nexchange
, Compugates Holdings, Aemulus Holdings, Kronologi Asia and Priceworth International.
Analysts said while the second liner stocks were mainly lower today it was unlikely to experience a systematic selldown.
Frontken extended its losses declining 9.1% to 30 sen at 11.15am, the biggest fall since November 2015. It was the most heavily traded counter so far today with 10.59 million shares traded. Its trading volume was about 5.5 times the 20-day average for this time of the day. The counter fell 19% yesterday to 33 sen. In the past month, it has fallen some 10%.
Dagang NeXchange is the second most heavily traded with 5.4 million traded, about 5.8 times its 20-day average trading volume. The stock fell 6.7%, or 3.5 sen to 48.5 sen. DNeX-WD fell 6% to RM23.5 sen.
Compugates fell 14.29% to three sen, Aemulus eased 8.53% to 59 sen, Kronologi Asia dropped 3.98% to 84.5 sen while Priceworth declined 4.44% to 21.5 sen. Shares of Prestariang plunged 3.7%, or 7 sen to RM1.82, its lowest since July 2016. Its trading volume of about was about 35% of the 20-day average.
Meanwhile, Asia stocks drifted lower Tuesday despite yet another record close on Wall Street, as investors focused on upcoming US inflation data.
Japan’s Nikkei Stock Average falling 0.26%, the Shanghai Composite Index fell 0.2%, South Korea’s Kospi added 0.81% and the Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong was up 9.4%.
Overnight, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 25.61 points to a new closing record of 22,118.42. Earlier, European stocks tumbled after the United Nations implemented new sanctions on North Korea.
“Following the mixed performance in the US and Europe, the FBM KLCI could trend sideways below the resistance of 1,800 points,” JF Apex said.
