Keadaan Wall Street yang tidak menentu/tumbled pada hari Rabu semalam, menjadikan pelabur2 bimbang terutama sektor kewangan, di Malaysia sendiri semalam termasuk sektor peladangan, kewangan dan pembinaan.Dow Jones jatuh lebih 2 persen (lebih 230 points).
Kenaikan harga minyak akan menyebabkan pelabur2 tidak memasuki pasaran KLSE lebih2 lagi keadaan politik yang tidak stabil. Siapakah yang menjadi puncanya...
Harga minyak naik menjadi punca kepada semua barangan naik harga, menjadikan rakyat "naik minyak", seperti melakukan PROTES minggu lepas (Ahad), dan ini akan berterusan. Dengan mengambil kira pasaran dunia (ekonomi dan harga barangan) terutama di Amerika Syarikat (sahabat niaga Malaysia yg utama), amat penting semua orang mengambil kira, menentang kenaikan harga minyak penyebab kenaikan inflasi negara kita.
(Sedutan STAR/business)
"Investors are bracing for financial companies to take another series of major credit-related write-downs, but the uncertainty about how large they'll be is weighing on the market, said Scott Wren, senior equity strategist at Wachovia Securities."
"As we go into earnings season, it's going to be much of the same as the first quarter,'' Wren said.
"Financials are going to suffer the worst comparisons again; consumer discretionary earnings are going to be down, too.''
The dollar fell against other major currencies. Gold prices rose.
"It's a challenging environment.''
He contends investors are hesitant to buy before getting a better read on the economy. Conroy said eventually, investors will start jumping in again - but it's unlikely to happen until the market gets through more second-quarter earnings and starts to see signs of a pick-up in the housing market.
"That would give the financials a platform to stand on,'' he said.
In other corporate news, Northwest Airlines Corp. said it will cut 2,500 jobs, or about 8 percent of its work force, and begin charging $15 to check a single piece of luggage in an attempt to offset high oil prices.
KLSE : "The recent drop in oil price will not spur investors to enter the local equity markets because the political horizon is still cloudy.
Markets worldwide had been battered recently due to the surging price of oil, with some reports speculating it might go to US$200 per barrel.
Oil had fallen more than US$9 in the past two trading sessions on the Nymex due to the strengthening US dollar and worries over a global economic slowdown amidst inflation. It settled at US$136.04 on Tuesday after hitting a record of US$145.85 last Thursday.
It had regained some ground at mid-afternoon yesterday on electronic trading in Singapore after Iran test-fired a conventional warhead and the greenback fell. At 5.31pm, the price of a barrel of light sweet crude for August delivery was US$137.76.
According to an analyst with a local investment bank, the drop in the price of oil had given some relief” to the markets but would not be a factor in influencing how investors viewed the local equity markets.
He said fund managers would have factored in the price of oil and were looking for direction from the political front before investing.
"Unlike politics, the oil price is not a local issue as it is felt globally,” he pointed out, adding that for the foreseeable future, fund managers and other investors would be sitting at the sidelines to see how local politics progressed before putting any money forward.
A local fund manager said the current political scenario, while not the best, might still yield some opportunities. “There’re opportunities to pick up stocks that have already been battered down by a combination of inflation fears and political uncertainty.”
He said there would be companies that were able to pass on the cost from the oil price increase.
Meanwhile, Citigroup analyst Choong Wai Kee said in a research note last Friday that positive fundamentals, such as the country’s May trade surplus, which hit a record RM15.6bil on high commodity prices, had been ignored.
He said the local bourse, which saw a 6% decline last week, “was besieged by a confluence of bad news” from concerns such as rising inflation, slower growth, soaring oil prices and political uncertainty.
SAS/Hulu Sgr
