BELOW are excerpts of viewpoints from two selected research houses on what investors can expect in the day ahead:
Berjaya Research
The FBM KLCI trended lower for the third straight session on Wednesday with more than half of the key index components closing in the red.
Trading activity moderated with total market volume easing to 3.43 billion shares from 3.54 billion shares in the previous session.
Market breadth turned negative with 590 decliners outnumbering 450 advancers as profit taking filtered into the broader market.
We expect the FBM KLCI to remain volatile in the near term although the recent pullback could provide opportunities for selective bargain hunting in fundamentally sound stocks.
Investors are likely to remain cautious ahead of the European Central Bank’s (ECB) interest rate decision and Intel’s upcoming earnings release tonight with both events expected to provide further direction on the global economic and semiconductor outlook.
Domestically, stock-specific trading is likely to prevail as investors continue to assess corporate earnings developments and external geopolitical risks.
Technically, the key index has formed another bearish candlestick and looks to reverse most of last week gains.
The immediate resistance is at 1,735 points, followed by 1,740 points. On the flipside, near-term supports are pegged at 1,700 points and 1,680 points respectively.
Malacca Securities Research
Following Alphabet’s positive CAPEX outlook, we believe the bullish effect may spillover to local technology stocks, particularly Inari Amertron Bhd and Frontken Corp Bhd.
The former which is Broadcom Inc’s (AVGO) primary OSAT (outsourced semiconductor assembly and test) partner in Malaysia might experience higher demand as Google accelerates its Cloud AI workloads, thus increasing demand for AVGO’s custom AI accelerator chips.
Meanwhile, given that Google’s custom TPUs (tensor processing units) and tensor chips are manufactured at TSMC’s advanced nodes, this would lead to higher precision cleaning and surface treatment demand for Frontken Corp Bhd which acts as an advanced precision cleaning, surface treatment and maintenance partner for TSMC.
While the FBM KLCI fell marginally, the technical indicators are still showing positive signals with the MACD histogram in the positive territory while the RSI is hovering above 50, suggesting that the positive momentum is intact.
Near-term resistance sits at 1,726-1,731 with support anchored at 1,691-1,696. – July 23, 2026
