Bursa wavers as Petronas Dagangan stages pullback

KUALA LUMPUR: A pullback in Petronas Dagangan shares weighed on the FBM KLCI in early Tuesday trade but trading volume was thin.

At 9.07am, the KLCI was down 1.04 points or 0.06% to 1,723.54. Turnover was 188.12 million shares valued at RM84.65mil. There were 96 gainers, 177 losers and 192 counters unchanged.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan held near its highest since mid-September as US and Chinese negotiators work to hammer out a deal that would end a tit-for-tat tariff battle that began in mid-2018, Reuters reported.

Wall Street's three major indexes ended higher on Monday but well below the session's highs, with the Dow up 0.2%, the S&P 500 adding 0.1% and the Nasdaq gaining 0.4%.

Petronas Dagangan fell RM1.38 to RM27.02 with 500 shares done, Deleum lost 14 sen to RM1.14 and Wah Seong 12 sen lower at 78.5 sen.

MI lost 17 sen to RM2.48, DKSH 16 sen to RM2.56 while BPlant fell 11 sen to 86 sen and Econ Bhd 6.5 sen to 46.5 sen.

Tan Chong rallied 16 sen to RM1.64 after its earning surprised on the upside, Petronas Chemicals gained 13 sen to RM9.29 and Maybulk 9.5 sen to 69 sen and SunCon five sen higher at RM1.78.

Kenanga Research, in its technical outlook, believes the overall outlook of the KLVCI has turned positive given that the index has decisively broken above its 100-day SMA despite seeing some short-term retracement or consolidation possibility. 

“Continued buying momentum could see the index trending higher to its resistances at 1,800 (R1) and 1,830 (R2). Should there be negative developments from the trade talks, support levels can be identified at 1,700 (S1) and 1,630 (S2),” it said.