KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia opened weaker on Friday amid a mixed performance on Wall Street overnight as US bank earnings failed to impress.
The Dow Jones was down 0.5% and the S&P500 fell 0.3% even as the Nasdaq managed to claw back earlier losses to end flat.
According to Malacca Securities Research, a sell-off in banking stocks in China due to a spillover effect from developer stocks was also weighing on investor sentiment.
At 9.05am, the FBM KLCI was down 1.8 points to 1,418.26. There were 110 decliners compared with 106 gainers.
Trading volume was RM95.28mil valued at RM26.73mil.
The selling pressure in the financial sector appeared to impact local banks with CIMB sliding four sne to RM5.06, Public Bank dropping one sne to RM4.39 and Maybank shedding one sen to RM8.61.
Press Metal
dropped four sen to RM4.14, Tenaga Nasional lost six sen to RM8.02, PETRONAS Gas shed eight sen to MM16.32 and PETRONAS Chemicals gained three sen to RM8.06.
Bursa Malaysia's technology sector however was marginally higher after the Nasdaq managed to keep afloat despite the negative sentiment from higher inflation and recession risk.
Gainers included D&O Green Technology up four sen to RM3.63, Vitrox gaining five sen to RM6.06 and UWC adding two sen to RM3.13.
Among actives, Fitters was up one sen to seven sen, Jetson gained two se to 24 sen and Metronic rose 0.5 sen to 9.5 sen.
