KUALA LUMPUR: Blue chips fell in early Monday trade, weighed down by losses in Public Bank , Maxis and Petronas Chemical in the absence of any strong leads from institutional players.
Seacera tumbled in active trade after it was classified as a Practice Note 17 company.
At 9.26am, the FBM KLCI was down 4.34 points or 0.26% to 1,634.04. Turnover was 409.10 million shares valued at RM181.23mil, reflecting the lower quality buying. There were 160 gainers, 244 losers and 268 counters unchanged.
Asian stock markets edged up after surprising strong US first-quarter economic growth boosted the S&P 500 index to a record high, but gains were capped by caution over less upbeat aspects in the GDP report which pointed to some weakening ahead, Reuters reported.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was up less than 0.1%, edging higher after posting its biggest weekly drop in more than a month last week.
Australian shares were down 0.26% while Seoul's KOSPI was up 0.4%.
At Bursa, Public Bank was the top loser, down 18 sen to RM22.46 while Maxis and Petronasw Chemical lost seven sen each to RM5.37 and RM9.03 and Axiata gave up six sen to RM3.49.
DWL-PA tumbled 11 sen to 59 sen, Gamuda six sen lower to RM3.49.
Seacera skidded 5.5 sen to 26 sen with 25.55 million shares done.
Heinken rose 42 sen to RM24.50 and BAT 18 sen to RM35.76 and Ajinomoto 12 sen to RM17.46.
Yee Lee surged 39 sen to RM2.33 after its major shareholders decided to take it private at RM2.39 a share.
Can-One
, Tong Herr, KPS and G3 were also among the early gainers.
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