Cautious start to the week for Bursa, Asian markets

KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia got off to a cautious start on Monday, tracking the key Asian markets, as investors braced for the barrage of corporate results for the July-September quarter.

At 9.13am, the KLCI was down 2.15 points or 0.13% to 1,594.69. Turnover was 312.07 million shares valued at RM112.71mil. There were 190 gainers, 137 losers and 226 counters unchanged.

Asian shares made guarded gains as investors braced for another week of likely conflicting commentary on the US-China trade dispute, while the outperformance of recent US economic data gave the dollar a leg up on its peers, Reuters reported.

MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan bounced 0.26%, after losing 0.4% last week.

Japan’s Nikkei firmed 0.8% in early trade, while Australian stocks rose 0.5%. E-Mini futures for the S&P 500 added 0.2%.

At Bursa Malaysia last week, foreign funds were net sellers at RM187.2mil while the selling was absorbed by local institutions with net buying at RM139.4mil and local retail investors RM47.8mil.

In early trade, Nestle fell 50 sen to RM144.30 and F&N 16 sen to RM34.50 while Ajinomoto lost six sen to RM15.58 in thin trade.

Elsoft lost eight sen to 85.5 sen, Salute 6.5 sen to 77 sen, Pintaras six sen to RM3.22 while Axiata lost five sen to RM4.31. SAM Engineering and APM were also down five sen each to RM8.05 and RM1.98.

Bumi Armada fell two sen to 48.5 sen with 12.1 million shares done.

Master-Pack Group surged 41 sen to RM2.42, KLCC 10 sen to RM8, Thong Guan and MBM Resources nine sen each to RM3.55 and RM3.82 while Uchitech gained eight sen to RM2.88.

Source: TheStar