KUALA LUMPUR: Key Asian markets and Bursa Malaysia slumped early Friday, weighed down by overnight losses on Wall Street and worries from the US, but the FBM KLCI managed to retrace some of its earlier losses.
At 9.15am, the KLCI was down 3.27 points or 0.18% to 1,773.04. Turnover was 164.07 million shares valued at RM94.81mil. Decliners thumped advancers nearly seven to one or 350 losers to 56 gainersand 168 counters unchanged.
Asian stock investors joined a global retreat from riskier assets on Friday and the dollar wavered on growing doubts about US President Donald Trump's ability to fulfill his economic agenda, Reuters reported.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan dropped 0.5% in early trade, but still looked set to gain 1.4% for the week after tensions between North Korea and the United States came off the boil. Japan's Nikkei slid 1.2% as the yen rose, and looked set to lose 1.3% for the week.
Overnight, Wall Street's major indexes slumped between 1.2% and 1.9%. The S&P 500 index posted its biggest drop in three months, Reuters reported.
Oil prices fell early on Friday as part of a broad-based selloff across markets and despite signs that crude markets are gradually tightening.
Brent crude futures fell 10 cents to US$50.93 per barrel while US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures slipped seven cents to US$47.02 a barrel.
At Bursa Malaysia, chip makers and tech-related stocks bore the brunt with MPI down 50 sen to RM13.60, SAM Engineering lost 33 sen to RM7.64 while KESM fell 32 sen to RM14.88 and Vitrox 10 sen lower at RM4.70.
Systech lost three sen to 41 sen, IFCA MSC shed 1.5 sen to 39.5 sen while Aemulus
was flat at 69 sen.
HL Industries skidded 26 sen to RM9.52. It swung to a loss of RM104.57mil in the fourth financial quarter (Q4) ended June 30 after including an impairment provision of RM172mil for its investment in Malaysian Newsprint Industries Sdn Bhd (MNI).
Allianz lost 24 sen to RM14.28 and Petron 17 sen lower at RM9.28while IQGroup lost 16 sen to RM4.64.
UMW was the top gainer, up 26 sen to RM596 with 500 shares done, SLP added 23 sen to RM2.17, Tomei 15.5 sen higher at 74 sen and Carlsberg 10 sen to RM14.80.
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