Bursa Malaysia Open Marginally Higher But Turns Lower Thereafter

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 31 (Bernama) -- Bursa Malaysia opened marginally higher but turned lower thereafter, weighed by cautious sentiment despite Wall Street’s positive overnight performance, an analyst said.

At 9.05 am, the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) slipped 5.31 points to 1,547.38 compared to Tuesday’s close of 1,552.69.  

Bursa Malaysia and its subsidiaries were closed on Wednesday and Thursday in conjunction with the Chinese New Year holiday.

At the opening bell, the benchmark index was 1.09 points higher at 1,553.78.

Meanwhile, market breadth was positive, with 135 gainers against 127 decliners, while 229 counters were unchanged, 1,830 untraded, and 37 suspended.

Turnover stood at 107.68 million shares worth RM82.09 million.

Rakuten Trade Sdn Bhd head of research Kenny Yee noted that investors may still be concerned about the disruptions from China’s artificial intelligence (AI) platform, Deepseek, on the hyper-scalers’ AI investments going forward, leading to a downtrend in FBM KLCI.

Nevertheless, he foresees that foreign funds will eventually re-look at Asia as a preferred destination due to reasonable valuations compared to those overvalued ones on Wall Street.

“Thus, we can expect a U-turn in foreign funds back to the region. For today, we anticipate the index to hover within the 1,550 to 1,560 range,” he told Bernama.

Among heavyweights, Maybank was flat at RM10.24, CIMB gained five sen to RM7.99, Public Bank and Tenaga Nasional both eased six sen to RM4.31 and RM13.54, respectively, while IHH Healthcare lost seven sen to RM7.08.

For actives, EA and TWL were unchanged at half-a-sen and 2.5 sen, respectively, while Gamuda fell eight sen to RM3.95, and YTL Corp rose two sen to RM1.92

On the broader market, the FBM Emas Index declined 13.01 points to 11,829.85, the FBMT 100 Index lost 15.57 points to 11,525.62, and the FBM Emas Shariah Index fell 14.12 points to 11,680.38.

The FBM ACE Index rose 21.10 points to 5,166.80 and the FBM 70 Index gained 65.81 points to 17,587.82.

By sector, the Financial Services Index dipped 36.94 points to 18,755.17, the Industrial Products and Services Index eased 0.76 of-a-point to 164.25, the Plantation Index lost 26.76 points to 7,367.75 while the Energy Index added 1.32 points to 823.80.

-- BERNAMA