Investors take profit as Fed minutes disappoint

KUALA LUMPUR: While Wall Street's decline overnight might put a cap on investor optimism, the outperformance of the domestic market in the previous session was reflective of the sustained foreign buying in local equities.

As at midweek, Bursa Malaysia is into a sixth consecutive week of net foreign buying, bucking the negative trend of foreign flows in regional markets.

At 9am, the benchmark FBM KLCI was down 2.9 points to 1,460.61 as investors took gains following the release of US Federal Reserve meeting minutes that indicated policymakers were split over whether there was a need for further rate hikes this year.

Major US indices fell on the release of the minutes, with the Dow Jones losing 0.5% to 34,765, the S&P500 dropping 0.8% to 4,404 and the Nasdaq sliding 1.15% to 13,474.

Despite the external developments, Malacca Securities Research said in a note the positive performance on the local market was expected to continue given the net buying mode on local equities.

"The lower liners may also capitalise on the positive market breadth with rotational play noticeable within the construction and property-related stocks," said the research firm.

Meanwhile, it said the weak performance on Wall Street overnight may limit the upside potential of the local market.

On Bursa, the blue chips came under pressure with banks leading the decline. Maybank dropped one sen to RM9.02, Public Bank fell three sen to RM4.16, CIMB slid six sen to RM5.67 and Hong Leong Bank was down two sen to RM19.90.

Tenaga Nasional dropped eight sen to RM9.91, PETRONAS Chemicals shaved three sen to RM6.82 and Press Metal lost one sen to RM4.91.

Meanwhile, top actives on the market were Hong Seng up 1.5 sen to 7.5 sen, Aimflex down 0.5 sen to 20 sen and Sapura Energy unchanged at 5.5 sen.