Bursa Malaysia lower at opening

KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia opened lower on continued selling in blue chips and selected heavyweights, dealers said.

At 9.20am, the benchmark FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) stood at 1,660.11, down 5.21 points from Wednesday's 1,665.32.

Losers led gainers 192 to 178, while 212 counters were unchanged, 1,227 counters untraded and 34 others suspended.

Turnover stood at 256.73 million shares worth RM110.44 million.

Nertherlands-based ABN Amro Research said the US Federal Reserve's decision to hike its interest rate next month has stoked negative investor sentiment.

"We think that after the liftoff in December, the pace for rate hikes will be slow.

"We expect the Fed policy rate to reach 0.5% in December 2015. Then the next hike will be in June, giving the Fed a bit more time to assess the impact for the US economy and thereafter hikes every other meeting reaching 1.25%," the research house said in a statement today.

On the scoreboards, the FBM Emas Index fell 28.24 points to 11,587.00, the FBMT100 Index went down 30.29 points to 11,259.29 and the FBM Emas Shariah Index slipped 49.54 points to 12,475.35.

The FBM Ace rose 35.87 points to 6,424.21 and the FBM 70 eased 16.36 points to 12,922.25.

Sector-wise, the Finance Index added 28.08 points to 14,084.43, the Industrial Index inched down 7.76 points to 3,293.59 while the Plantation Index was 73.16 points lower at 7,541.12.

Among heavyweights, Maybank gained three sen to RM8.25, Public Bank added four sen to RM17.86, TNB fell two sen to RM13.10 and IHH lost 10 sen to RM6.45.

Among the actives, INIX Technologies and Instacom rose one sen each to 13 sen and 21.5 sen respectively, while Hibiscus was two sen better at 32.5 sen.

The physical price of gold as at 9.30am stood at RM147.29 per gramme, down 44 sen from RM147.73 at 5.00pm yesterday. – Bernama

Source: http://www.thesundaily.my/news/1608786