Bursa starts August on cautious note

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KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia started August on a cautious footing on Monday, amid a mixed market, with chip makers and tech stocks among the top gainers.

At 9.35am, the FBM KLCI was up 2.83 points or 0.19% to RM1,497.43. Turnover was 629.20 million shares valued at RM336.25mil. There were 315 gainers, 294 losers and 329 counters unchanged.

Last Friday, the KLCI was down more than 8% year-to-date on persistent selling by foreign funds due to economic concerns, lagging corporate earnings and the political volatility. They remained net sellers for week ended July 30, which saw outflow amounting to -RM579.73mil and this was the sixth consecutive week of net selling by the foreign investors.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg reported Asian stocks and US equity futures rose early Monday as some of the concerns over Covid-19 reopening disruption and China’s regulatory crackdown eased. A gauge of the dollar dipped.

Equities climbed in Japan, South Korea and Australia, where Afterpay Ltd. surged after digital-payments platform Square Inc. agreed to buy the buy-now, pay-later company. Futures on the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 pushed higher.

On the outlook for Bursa, Rakuten Trade believes ongoing political uncertainties coupled with

persistently high Covid cases will continue to pressure the KLCI on the back of foreign disposals.

“Thus, we expect the benchmark index to see some downside today though bargain hunting activities may emerge as well. As such, we reckon the index to trend within the 1,490-1,500 range today,” it said.

SAM Engineering rallied RM1.30 to RM12.10, MPI RM1.18 to RM45.68, KESM 84sen to RM14, Vitrox 46 sen to RM19.36, Unisem 27 sen to RM8.62 and MI 21 sen to RM4.10.

Underpinning the KLCI’s advance was Petronas Gas, adding 20 sen to RM15.44.

As for consumer stocks, Nestle rose RM1 to RM134 and Dutch Lady 38 sen to RM33.48.

Among the active stockks were Serba Dinamik, down 0.5 sen to 39 sen but Resintech jumper 14.5 sen to 74 sen.

Genetec gave up some recent gains after scaling fresh record highs, dipping 18 sen to RM22.64, Quality 11 sen to RM1.39, Perstima 10 sen to RM3.75.

Other decliners were Genting Plantations, HH Group and Hengyuan.



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