Today, Bursa Malaysia opened almost unchanged due to slightly less encouraging performance sentiment on Wall Street overnight.
At 9am this morning, the FTSE Bursa Malaysia (FBM KLCI) fell as much as 0.24 points to 1,462.13 from 1,462.37 on Wednesday.
The overall market situation shows negative when the loss counters exceed the profit counters, namely 165 to 158 while 297 counters are unchanged, 1,600 are not trading and 16 others are hanging.
The number of merchandise was 290.01 million units worth RM98.13 million.
According to Vice President of Rakuten Trade Equity Research, Thong Pak Leng said Wall Street closed lower generally following profit-taking activity as sentiment was determined by the interpretation of the US Federal Reserve's (The Fed) stance on profit rates.
Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 284 points and the Nasdaq fell 174 points. This is largely due to Apple's sales reduction. The US 10-year Treasury yield fell slightly to 3.92%.
In addition, the Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong maintained its downward trend due to the slump on Wall Street and expectations of a cut in the US interest rates. Pessimism about China's recovering economy also prompted selling on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
On the local rankings, Thong said the FBM KLCI would rise and close above the 1,460 level following stock buying activity at low prices in the midday session last night.
He said again, they expect the index to be in the range of 1,460 to 1,470 today and the 1,465 level is a difficult area to penetrate. If he manages to break out, a level of 1,500 is his next target.
Of the higher-priced banking stocks, Maybank and Public Bank, added 1.0 sen to RM8.90 and RM4.28 respectively, PPB Group rose 12.0 sen to RM14.68, QL Resources rose 5.0 sen to RM5.78 and CIMB fell 1.0 sen to RM5.89.
YTL Power International rose 1.0 sen to RM2.81 and Hong Leong Bank rose 2.0 sen to RM18.52.
Of the active stocks, Minetech rose 2.5 sen to 20.0 sen, Hong Seng Consolidated was unchanged at 3.0 sen, MMAG rose 1.0 sen to 16 sen and Edaran jumped 24 sen to RM1.45.
The Financial Services Index increased 14.28 points to 16,324.82, however the Agriculture Index fell 6.26 points to 7,006.38.
