Bursa Malaysia slips on cautious sentiment ahead of Fed meeting, inflation print

KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia ended marginally lower on Wednesday on cautious sentiment ahead of the US Federal Reserve’s (Fed) decision on interest rates and inflation data due later today.

At 5 pm, the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) slid 2.54 points to its intraday low of 1,608.95 compared with 1,611,49 at Tuesday’s close.

The FBM KLCI opened 5.14 points higher at 1,616.63 and hit an intraday high of 1,618.99 in the early morning session.

On the broader market, decliners outpaced gainers 758 to 550, while 468 counters were unchanged, 625 untraded, and nine others suspended.

Turnover expanded to 7.59 billion units worth RM5.28 billion from Tuesday's 6.98 billion units worth RM5.12 billion.

A dealer said the local market performance mirrored the global markets as investors focused on the outcome of the Federal Open Market Committee meeting and the US Consumer Price Index (CPI) to be released on Wednesday.

The US CPI print will come on the heels of China's inflation data released earlier today which signals weak demand.

China’s statistics bureau reported that the increase in consumer prices was weaker than expected at 0.3 per cent from a year ago in May, against a consensus estimate of a 0.4 per cent increase.

He said the market expects the Fed to keep rates unchanged as inflation has proven to be sticky so far this year.

Back home, investors also took profit from the earlier session rally.

Heavyweights Press Metal led laggards, falling eight sen to RM5.83, MISC was down 11 sen to RM8.51, Public Bank eased two sen to RM4.06, and CelcomDigi and IHH lost three sen to RM3.78 and RM6.22 respectively.

As for the active counters, DNeX gained two sen to 49.5 sen, SNS Network added 12 sen to 87.5 sen, AT Systematization rose two sen to 23 sen, Harvest Miracle and Sapura Energy eased half-a-sen to 10 sen and 4.0 sen respectively, and JAKS Resources lost one sen to 18 sen. - Bernama