KUALA LUMPUR (Aug 6): The FBM KLCI has breached the 1,700 psychological level today, dragged mainly by weaker market sentiment that resulted in a heavy selldown among blue chip counters.

At market close, the benchmark index has fallen 30.92 points or 1.79% to settle at 1,694.64 points.

A remisier who declined to be named told theedgemarkets.com that the capital market is also growing uneasy due to the country’s unresolved political fund issue involving Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak.

“But the past few times when the KLCI fell below the 1,700 mark, it rebounded in one or two days. So we hope it will do so again this time,” he said.

Yesterday, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) unilaterally announced that the high-level government task force that was investigating 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) had been disbanded, with the three main agencies now ordered to work independently.

Meanwhile, the ringgit has weakened further to 3.9125 against US dollar at the time of writing, and to 2.8224 against the Singapore dollar.

Across the market, some 1.65 billion shares worth RM2.02 billion were traded. Losing counters outpaced gainers at 686 against 187, while 282 counters remained unchanged.

Top gainers were led by Oriental Food Industries Holdings Bhd, while British American Tobacco (Malaysia) Bhd was again the biggest losing counter — it led the same group yesterday.

The most active counter was The Media Shoppe Bhd, which saw 92.72 million shares traded for the day.

Across the region, Japan’s Nikkei gained 0.24%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 0.57%, while South Korea’s Kospi dropped by 0.81%.