Mid-morning Market KLCI remains lacklustre, dips

by **Cals** Mon 29 Jul 2013, 11:43

Mid-morning Market KLCI remains lacklustre, dips
Business & Markets 2013
Written by Surin Murugiah of theedgemalaysia.com
Monday, 29 July 2013 10:39

KUALA LUMPUR (July 29): The FBM KLCI remained lacklustre at mid-morning on Monday and dipped, weighed by select blue chips.

At 10.33am, the FBM KLCI shed 5.50 points to 1,802.11.

Losers overtook gainers by 330 to 157, while 264 counters traded unchanged. Volume was 322.33 million shares valued at RM231.21 million.

The losers included BAT, KPJ Healthcare, Nestle, DKSH, Gabungan AQRS, Ibraco, Southern Acids, United PLANTATION []s, PPB, APM Automotive and UMW.

BIMB Securities Research in a note Monday said economic data and the Feds meeting this week would take centre stage and dictate the direction of global equities over the immediate term.

As a result, investors were mostly sidelined with Wall Street staying rather flat over the past few days and ended 3.22 points higher at 15,559 last Friday, it said.

The research house said European stocks were mixed as the ECB will be announcing some policy decisions later this week.

Asian markets were also mixed due to the lack of direction from the US as profit taking activities had seeped in, it said.

Locally, the FBM KLCI was flat ending last Friday 0.81 point lower at 1,807.61, said BIMB Securities.

“Performance of the local bourse has been commendable as some foreign funds may be eyeing at its defensive nature amid the volatile regional markets of late. The benchmark index for month of July had so far ascended by around 1.9% as buying support had been apparent from the foreign funds.

“As for today, we believe the market to be lacklustre affected by the lack of catalysts and expect the local bourse to consolidate within the 1,800/805 range,” it said.

Elsewhere, Japanese stocks fell on Monday morning, underperforming other Asian markets as the yen hit a one-month high against a dollar hamstrung by expectations of dovish comments from the U.S. Federal Reserve after a policy review this week, according to Reuters.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan edged up 0.1 percent, following on from a 1.9 percent rise last week. But Tokyo's Nikkei slid 1.8 percent, extending last week's 3.2 percent decline, it said.