Holding Pattern

For most of the day until the final minutes, they held the market in suspended animation-a holding pattern of sorts. Since the market was down because of Wall Street, sellers took captive of some blue chip counters particularly Genting and Commerz and to a small degree, Maybank.

The speculatives moved up and down by a sen or two all day. Finally the bargain-hunters took down JAKS, KPS and RCE. KHSB managed to close unchanged.

The CI closed down 14.2 points to 1290.7. Losers led gainers;694 to 176. Volume was 871 million shares valued at RM1.3 billion.Transmile jumped again on renewed support to close up 51 sen; RHBCap put on 20 sen; UAC notched up 18 sen and Rexit ascended 14 sen. Losers were Topglove losing 35 sen,MMMCorp dropping 30 sen, BAT going down 25 sen and IOICorp sliding by 25 sen.

The portfolio reflected the milieu of the main market. Genting dropped 20 sen to RM7.70, Resorts was off 6 sen to RM3.80 but BJ Sports Toto inched up 2 sen to RM4.88.Metronic and KHSB were unchanged at 16.5 sen and 1.08 sen respectively. Dropping 3 sen each were RCE at 87.5 sen, Welli at 97 sen and JAKS at 89.5 sen.AMDB dropped 0.5 sen to 41.5 sen. So we can see the speculative stocks got quite a drubbing today.