Mid-morning Market KLCI falls 0.75%, banks and blue chips weigh

by **Cals** Wed 31 Jul 2013, 10:28

Mid-morning Market KLCI falls 0.75%, banks and blue chips weigh
Business & Markets 2013
Written by Surin Murugiah of theedgemalaysia.com
Wednesday, 31 July 2013 10:07

KUALA LUMPUR (July 31): The FBM KLCI fell 0.75% at mid-morning on Wednesday, weighed by losses at index-linked banking stocks and select blue chips.

At 10am, the FBM KLCI lost 13.44 points to 1,781.64.

Losers beat gainers by 441 to 95, while 207 counters traded unchanged. Volume was 409.73 million shares valued at RM381.71 million.

The top losers at mid-morning included Petronas Dagangan, Hong Leong Bank, KLK, LPI Capital, Maybank, MMHE, Allianz, PPB, Dialog and CIMB.

The actives included Sona Petroleum, MAS, Tiger Synergy, Dialog, Flonc, Maybank, TH Heavy Engineering and CIMB.

The gainers included Pintaras, Country View, Hup Seng, Cepco, Protasco, Aeon, United PLANTATION []s, APM Automotive, TFP and FACB Industries.

BIMB Securities Research in a note Wednesday said it was “wait and see” for investors ahead of the Feds 2-day meeting starting today.

As a result, the DJI Average barely moved at 15,521 (-1.4 points) on Tuesday but bond traders were less sanguine as the US 10-year Treasury ended lower with yield now at 2.61%, it said.

The research house said European markets were also stagnant as the region has also the meeting of ECB to monitor.

In Asia, it was a rather mixed day as regional markets remained lacklustre from the lack of fresh impetus, it said.

“Locally, the FBM KLCI was down 3.7 points at 1,795.08 as profit taking continued. Latest downgrade by Fitch to negative on Malaysia may have instigated a flight of foreign funds out of the country yesterday.

“Reflecting the sentiments, the 10-year yield of the MGS is currently at 4.06% from its low at 3.06% during mid-May this year. Meanwhile, we expect the local bourse to be flat with the 1,790 as the next support level,” it said.

Meanwhile, Asian shares were flat on Wednesday and the dollar held onto some slight gains as market momentum stalled ahead of the outcome of the U.S. Federal Reserve policy meeting and release of U.S. GDP data, according to Reuters.

The dollar was steady against a basket of major currencies after a 0.2 percent rise on Tuesday. The dollar index is down 1.6 percent in July and set to post a second straight monthly loss for the first time since the turn of the year, it said.