Political turmoil spurs selling on Bursa

KUALA LUMPUR: Investors fled the stock market on Wednesday on news that the ruling coalition had lost the support of its largest party ally.

At 12.30pm, the FBM KLCI had lost 12.83 points to 1,487.43 after falling to as low as 1,483.73 earlier in the day on fresh political turmoil as Umno withdrew its support for the Perikatan Nasional government.

However, the market had yet to digest the contents of the Prime Minister's announcement that he would not resign and there would be a vote of confidence in September, which came after the market had closed for lunch break.

The market breadth was overwhelmingly negative with 728 decliners versus 192 gainers while the blue-chip FBM KLCI recorded 28 of its 30 component counters falling into the red.

While glove maker Hartalega managed to eke out gains earlier in the day on the strength of its previously announced quarterly results, its stock price flattened out by midday to end unchanged at RM6.80.

Genting Malaysia was the other FBM KLCI counter end the morning unchanged at RM2.71.

On the broader market, some highlights of the day include Genetech up 28 sen to RM23.28, Transocean up 17 sen to RM4.10 and Tafi gaining 10 sen to RM1.87.

Top actives were Advance Synergy up two sne to 18.5 sen, Saudee falling 0.5 sen to 10 sen and DNeX rising 2.5 sne to 74.5 sen.

Elsewhere in Asia, equities were led higher by strong corporate results on Wall Street, despite the prevailing caution over the spread of Covid's Delta variant.

South Korea's Kospi jumped 1.3%, China's composite Index added 0.5% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng climbed 1.5%.

Japan's Nikkei lagged the other major markets, falling 0.25% while Australia's ASX200 was up 0.3%.