MALAYSIAN shares are set to slide today following a steep fall on Wall Street overnight, as amounting fears of a deep economic downturn continue to weigh on global markets.
Weak quarterly earnings reported by many Malaysian companies will also hurt investor sentiment and add to the downward pressure, dealers said.
The main
Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke also painted a grim picture of the
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“There is no catalyst for the local market at the moment, and with global markets dipping, we are likely to see a fall here as well,” said a dealer at a local brokerage house.
“A disappointing earning season has not helped either, with most of the companies reporting weaker profits and cutting forecasts,” she said.
Dealers said plantation company Sime Darby, the country’s biggest listed firm, could see more downward pressure after a series of stock downgrades following a cut in its full year profit outlook issued with first quarter earnings last week.
Sime Darby said on Friday it expected to post a full-year net profit of RM1.9 billion, almost half its previous target of RM3.7 billion.
The company’s shares tumbled as much as 14.5 per cent to fall to a new low yesterday and ended down 12.8 per cent at RM5.10.
The benchmark index lost 2.04 per cent yesterday to close at 848.43 points. - Reuters
Down We Go Again: Fourth-Worst Drop Ever for Dow
The stock market suffered one of its worst days since the financial meltdown Monday, slicing 680 points off the Dow Jones industrial average as Wall Street snapped out of its daydream of a rally and once again faced the harsh reality of a recession.
Not only did stocks end their five-day winning streak, they erased more than half the gains. The Standard & Poor's 500 stock index, one of the broadest market gauges, lost nearly 9 percent.
"This is just another episode in a long story and the story is all about recession and the question is how long and how deep," said Chuck Widger, chief executive and chairman of investment management firm Brinker Capital. "We're going to have continuing volatility until investors have better visibility."
"All the data is being filtered to answer the two questions of how deep and how long the recession will be," he added.
The selling was broad and deep. All 30 of the stocks in the Dow Jones industrial average finished lower. On the New York Stock Exchange, more than 7 stocks fell for every one that rose.
The Dow lost 679.95 points to close at about 8,149.
"We've got a tug-of-war of war going on," said Al Goldman, chief market strategist at Wachovia Securities in
The decline Monday indicated that last week's rally was merely a hiatus from, not an end to, the wrenching volatility on Wall Street since the market's peak in October 2007 peak.
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