Broad selling across Bursa Malaysia, KLCI down 13 points

KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia ended the day in the red on Wednesday with selling pressure seen across the board in line with the weak performance of its regional peers.

Dealers said market sentiment was curbed by losses on the Wall Street where high bond yields triggered risk aversion. The selling pressure came after the 10-year Treasury yield rises above 3% for the first time in four years, a move that comes as first-quarter earnings season was failing to excite investors, despite some strong results.

The FBM KLCI shed 13.41 points to 1,851.93 after staying in the negative territory throughout the day amid a weak broader market. The index opened 1.86 points lower at 1,863.48 this morning.

In the broader market, there were 219 gainers with 680 losers and 350 counters unchanged. Turnover stood at 1.87 billion shares worth RM1.97bil.

The ringgit extended its downtrend against the US dollar on strong buying interest for the greenback as US bond yields increased, Ringgit was quoted at 3.9115, depreciating 0.17% at 5pm.

At Bursa Malaysia, the top losers was Nestle that plunged RM8.40, or 5.69% to RM139.10, Top Glove shed 44 sen to RM9.01 while Malaysian Pacific Industries closed 42 sen to RM7.71. The gainers included British American Tobacco, Dutch Lady and MSM. 

Unisem (M) Bhd, which plunged 17%, the biggest move since the company IPO in 1998, saw its proprietary day traders (PDT) and intraday short selling (IDSS) activities suspended.

Bursa Malaysia Securities said the suspension was due to the last done price of Unisem dropping more than 15 sen or 15% from the reference price.

It added that the PDT and IDSS activities will only be enabled the following trading day, on Thursday, April 26 at 9am.

The counter closed 40 sen, or 18.02% to RM1.82.

Movers in the KLCI component stocks included Nestle which dragged the index down by 3.541 points. Public Bank pushed the index lower by 1.814 points. The bank closed 26 sen lower at RM23.84. Genting Malaysia shed 14 sen to RM4.88 dragging the higher lower by 1.494.

On the external front, China stocks closed down on Wednesday as gains in healthcare firms were offset by losses in real estate and energy shares.

The blue-chip CSI300 index closed down 0.4% at 3,828.70 while the Shanghai Composite Index also fell 0.4% to 3,117.97 points. 

Japan’s Nikkei index closed down 0.28%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng closed 1% lower while South Korean’s Kospi was down 0.62%.