KUALA LUMPUR (Dec 22): Malaysian stocks closed lower today following modest losses on Wall Street. The FBM KLCI closed down 6.39 points or 0.4 % to 1,623.20 at 5pm.
Yesterday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 0.16% and the S&P500 ended lower 0.25%, while the Nasdaq composite fell 0.23%. Prior to this, the US markets had been on an upward trajectory since US President-elect Donald Trump’s win in the November presidential elections.
JF Apex Securities Bhd senior analyst Lee Cherng Wee said the drop in the US markets had led to the KLCI’s decline today.
“I believe the index’s performance today is in line with the weaker US markets, as well as European markets, there are no local [growth] catalysts for the market at the moment,” he told theedgemarkets.com.
Regionally, markets were also in trend with the US’s lacklustre performance as Japan’s Nikkei 225 closed down 0.09%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index closed down 0.8% and South Korea’s KOSPI closed down 0.11%.
Reuters reported that Asian shares struggled on Thursday after a lacklustre performance on Wall Street as investors looked to US economic data later in the day for potential catalysts, as markets wind down ahead of the holidays.
The United States is due to release a third revision of its third-quarter gross domestic product, Reuters reported.
At press time, the ringgit has recovered by 0.06% to trade at 4.4763 against the US dollar, from its close of 4.4792 yesterday.
Against the Singapore dollar, the ringgit strengthened by 0.23% to trade at 3.0937 from its close of 3.1008 yesterday.
At the closing bell, the KLCI saw 1.05 billion shares valued at RM1.2 billion traded. Losers outweighed gainers, with 514 losing counters against 215 gainers, while 337 counters were unchanged.
Top gainers for the day included Hai-O Enterprise Bhd, Malaysian Pacific Industries Bhd and Globetronics Technology Bhd, while losing counters included Teck Guan Perdana Bhd, MISC Bhd and Genting Bhd.
Hibiscus Petroleum Bhd was the most actively traded counter, with 49.7 million shares changing hands.