KL shares close lower on profit-taking

MALAYSIAN shares closed lower today on mild profit-taking involving select heavyweights amid a lack of positive leads following the decline on Wall Street overnight, dealers said.

However, shares of national carmaker Proton Holdings Bhd bucked the trend following talks that it would divest its distribution arm Proton Edar Sdn Bhd to Edaran Otomobil Nasional Bhd (EON).

The Proton stock ended 13 sen higher at RM3.12 after trading as high as RM3.20 during the day.

At the close, the benchmark Kuala Lumpur Composite Index (KLCI) rose 1.77 points to 966.60 after opening 9.07 points lower at 959.30 this morning.



The Finance Index dropped 42.92 points to 7,327.03, the Industrial Index fell 5.94 points to 2,232.40 and the Plantation Index was 17.27 points lower at 4,915.82.

Of the FTSE-BM series, the FBMEmas shed 19.00 points to 6,364.53, the FBM30 declined 19.88 points to 6,188.49, the FBM2BRD went down 23.81 points to 4,067.48 and the FBM-MDQ fell 20.06 points to 3,292.08.

Decliners led advancers by 306 to 251 while 191 counters were unchanged, 495 untraded and 36 others suspended.

The day's volume rose to 1.069 billion shares valued at RM959.849 million from 796.464 million shares worth RM883.540 million recorded yesterday.

"There was late bargain-hunting on select heavyweights that helped to erase some of the earlier losses and thus pushed the key index to close marginally lower," one of the dealers said. - Bernama

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