KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia ended in the red today following a domestic political wrangling culminating in the resignation of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad as prime minister and Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia chairman.
At close, the benchmark FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) was 2.68% or 41.14 points lower to 1,490.06 compared with Friday’s close of 1,531.20.
The market capital for the day was recorded at RM986.14 bil with money outflow of RM25.50 bil.
Throughout the day, the index moved between 1,485.71 and 1,510.42 after opening at 1,501,47.
On the scoreboard, losers outpaced gainers 1,015 to 137 with 222 unchanged, 625 untraded and 21 counters suspended.
Turnover, meanwhile, almost doubled to 4.03 billion worth RM3.90 bil compared with 2.73 billion shares worth RM2.14 bil on Friday.
An analyst said the heated political landscape is expected to cause the market to be on a downtrend, as investors started pulling out from the local market since morning.
However, institutional investors have entered the market to buffer the decline to avoid it from falling further.
“The index had fallen to the lowest level since 2011, marking a more than an eight-year low. With the current global economic slowdown, combined with the ongoing political tussle, the market would be in the red until clarity is assured,” she said.
She added that with more trouble brewing on the horizon, the construction sector would be affected badly as majority of the projects are either just being revived or announced.
Across the board, all indexes were in the red with construction leading the loss, shedding 6.07%, followed by energy, declining 4.05% followed by transportation, falling 4.02%.
Blue-chip stocks took the heaviest hit, with Maybank declining 21 sen RM8.20, Tenaga Nasional shrinking 64 sen to RM12.14, Public Bank reducing 74 sen to RM17.40, Petronas Chemicals sliding nine sen to RM6.36, and IHH weakening 14 sen to RM5.60.
The construction index, which took the hardest hit, witnessed government-linked companies such as Gamuda erasing 47 sen to RM3.51 with a total trade volume of 41.40 million shares.
Among actives, Advance Synergy and Sapura Energy both declined half-a-sen to 15 sen and 23 sen, respectively, while MyEG declined eight sen to RM1.22.
On the index board, the FBM Emas Index slipped 319.51 points to 10,646.10, the FBMT 100 Index declined 308.74 points to 10,438.37 and the FBM Ace shed 98.78 points to 5,648.14.
The FBM Emas Shariah Index gave up 332.29 points to 11,324.97 and the FBM 70 dipped 480.58 points to 13,401.21.
Sector-wise, the Industrial Products and Services Index eased 2.81 points to 142.98, the Financial Services Index shed 374.30 points to 14,321.62 and the Plantation Index erased 219.11 points to 6,915.54.
Main Market volume increased to 2.82 billion shares worth RM3.62 bil with 1.51 billion shares valued at RM1.86 bil last Friday.
Warrants turnover rose to 455.79 million units worth RM71.39 mil from 398.58 million units worth RM75.46 mil.
Volume on the ACE Market declined to 752.43 million worth RM204.35 mil from 821.86 million shares valued at RM196.23 mil last Friday.
Consumer products and services accounted for 678.44 million shares traded on the Main Market, industrial products and services (373.92 million), construction (216.51 million), technology (419.00 million), SPAC (nil), financial services (119.26 million), property (179.42 million), plantations (39.18 million), REITs (11.60 million), closed/fund (133,800), energy (507.15 million), healthcare (65.93 million), telecommunications and media (87.05 million), transportation and logistics (67.42 million), and utilities (58.77 million). – Feb 24, 2020, Bernama
