KUALA LUMPUR: Share prices on Bursa Malaysia were traded lower in the early session Monday, dragged down by selling activity mostly seen in heavyweights, dealers said.
At 9.04 am, the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) declined 6.68 points to 1,720.9, after opening 3.81 points weaker at 1,723.77.
The downtrend on Bursa was in tandem with the losses posted by Wall Street on Friday.
HwangDBS Vickers Research said major bellwethers on US stock market were down between 0.2 per cent and 0.8 per cent at the closing bell as sentiments were affected by persistent worries over the possibility of the Federal Reserve tapering its monetary stimulus policy soon.
In a note, the reserach firm said: "Nevertheless, we reckon our Malaysian bourse will be eager to hold on to its recent gains today.
"After staging a technical rebound of 41.4 points or 2.5 per cent over the past two days, the benchmark FBM KLCI could move with a marginal negative bias, possibly treading above the immediate support line of 1,720 ahead," the research house said.
On the scoreboard, the Finance Index fell 78.77 points to 16,127.4, the Plantation Index trimmed 12.23 points to 8,190.84 and the Industrial Index dwindled 22.7 points at 2,887.12.
The FBM Emas Index lost 39.67 points to 11,928.91, the FBM100 Index erased 39.67 points to 11,689.56 and the FBM 70 Index slipped 22.33 points to 13,517.2.
Losers led gainers 109 to 75, while 101 counters were unchanged, 1,284 untraded and 13 were suspended.
Turnover stood at 61.553 million shares worth RM22.559 million.
Among actives, Asia Media inched up half-a-sen to 12.5 sen, while both MAS and Compugates were flat at 31.5 sen and six sen, respectively.
Of the heavyweights, Maxis gained one sen to RM6.85, but Axiata Group was flat at RM6.74.
Meanwhile, Maybank slipped five sen to RM9.95, Sime Darby fell nine sen to RM9.30, CIMB eased four sen to RM7.24 and Petronas Chemicals shed two sen to RM6.60. - Bernama