KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia had a wobbly start on Tuesday after US stocks pulled back overnight on rising Treasury yields as well as pressure from rising oil prices.
At the start of the trading, the benchmark FBM KLCI was down 3.66 points to 1,631.63.
"With stronger crude oil and CPO prices, we believe traders may focus on oil and gas and Plantation stocks in the near term.
"Besides, we expect mild accumulation in technology stocks due to slightly weaker ringgit conditions, as the USD/RM rebounded from RM4.11 to RM4.27 yesterday, but upside may be capped with weaker Wall Street performance," said Malacca Securities Research in a note.
The research firm added that traders are likely to position themselves in sectors that may benefit from Budget 2025 such construction, property, building materials and utilities.
Blue chips recording early losses included Sunway down seven sen to RM4.13, YTL Power shedding four sen to RM3.53, Genting dropping three sen to RM4.17 and CelcomDigi falling five sen to RM3.62.
Meanwhile, KHPT made its debut on the ACE Market of Bursa Malaysia, rising to 4.5 sen at 24.5 sen at the time of writing at 9.12am. It was the top traded counter with 52.14 million shares done.
Also seeing high trading volumes were Velocity unchanged at seven sen and Alpha up 0.5 sen to 35.5 sen.
Pertama Digital endured another session of heavy selling to its limit down price at 48.5 sen. Since the start of October, the company has seen about RM670mil, or 75%, of its market cap wiped out from the selling.
Of actives, Hong Leong Industries rose 20 sen to RM14, Panasonic gained 16 sen to RM18.40 and Carlsberg added 14 sen to 19.66.
