KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia is in for another rocky session as the US's announcement of tariffs against Mexico, Canada and China over the weekend sparked the start of a trade war that has pummelled global equities.
The FBM KLCI fell 9.36 points to 1,547.56 as the market opened for trading, trading at six-month lows as foreign funds continued to pull out amid the risk-adverse sentiment.
US stock futures are on a sharp retreat at the time of writing, with the Dow Jones falling 1.1% and the Nasdaq shedding 2.2% as investors turn wary over the prospect of the higher tariffs driving up inflation.
On Bursa Malaysia, YTL Power, which was the subject of selling pressure last week following the unveiling of China's DeepSeek, fell four sen to RM3.04. YTL Corp shed one sen to RM1.90.
Tenaga Nasional dropped 12 sen to RM13.48.
Nestle fell 48 sen to RM89.50 amid the cautious consumer spending.
Local glove makers, however, were seeing some positive price action given the increased tariffs on their Chinese counterparts. Top Glove gained four sen to RM1.24, Hartalega
jumped 13 sen to RM3.44 and Kossan gained seven sne to RM2.31.
Rakuten Trade said in its market outlook that there is yet to be any sign of a post-Chinese New Year rally although the local bourse seemed ripe for some stock accumulation.
"As mentioned, we believe some foreign funds would shift to better value propositions, thus may re-look at Asia amid the heightening volatility on Wall Street," it said.
"Already, we noticed gold has reacted with all-time high at almost USD2,800/oz.
"Therefore, we anticipate the index to trend within the 1,555-1,565 range today."
