KUALA LUMPUR: Hwang DBS Vickers Research said just like in the past four days, it expects Bursa Malaysia to trade inside a narrow band with a marginal negative bias on Friday, Aug 6, as profit-taking activity persists.

HDBSVR said this was also a similar scene on Wall Street last night with key U.S. equity barometers dipping slightly between 0.1% and 0.5% at the closing bell. Essentially, sentiment was hurt by a rise in jobless claims which led to concerns that the economic momentum could reverse ahead.

?In terms of individual share price actions, the market focus will probably be on: (a) Sime Darby, which dropped 2.3% yesterday causing a 2.6-index point decline, after it rebutted a media report speculating that the conglomerate would slip into the red for the financial year ended Jun 10; and (b) recently beaten down stocks such as Mudajaya and Notion VTech, which may stage a moderate technical rebound from their oversold territories,? it said.