KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia saw a decline from yesterday's gains at the start of trading today, driven by mild profit-taking after the recent rally, amid mixed sentiments in regional markets.
At 9.15am, the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) declined 1.62 points to 1,543.09 from Monday's close of 1,544.71.
Nevertheless, the benchmark index opened slightly higher at 1,544.95, up by 0.24 points.
On the broader market, decliners outnumbered gainers at 208 to 201, while 328 counters were unchanged.
Turnover stood at 424.31 million units worth RM155.39 million.
Rakuten Trade Sdn Bhd equity research vice president Thong Pak Leng said the FBM KLCI continued with its climb despite the market lacking trading excitement.
However, he suspects retail participation will remain low due to the lack of leads at the moment.
"While we expect the market's run-up to persist, we expect the index may be somewhat affected by Wall Street thus expect the index to hover within the 1,540-1,550 range today."Meanwhile, the ongoing crude palm oil (CPO) uptrend that breach the RM4,100 per tonne should maintain interests on the plantation sector especially the laggards," he told Business Times.
Meanwhile, Thong said Wall Street closed mixed as traders were sidelined ahead of February's consumer price index (CPI) figure due today.
As a result, he said the Dow Jones Industrial (DJI) Average added 47 points while the Nasdaq lost 66 points with the US 10-year yield inched marginally higher at 4.098 per cent.
He added that in Hong Kong, the Hang Seng Index (HSI) jumped 244 points to above the 16,500 level as sentiment improves over optimism on the proposal to relax barriers to trade Hong Kong stocks for mainland Chinese.