Charge and Die!

It's 5 pm and market has ended with a minuscule gain of 1.77 points, propping the index feebly to 1381.50.

Started well with a rumble in line with a better Dow. Then Asian markets turned awry. Shenzhen plummeted 216 points, followed closely by Hang Seng, down 122 points. The Nikkei also dived to 156.33 points. Even our friend across the Causeway limped home with a 48 point loss. Given this scenario, fund managers lost their balls and stayed away in the afternoon session. Retailers, like rodents bargained the market down but all is not lost. Some late support on selected penny stocks and second liners did help a bit to sweeten misery.

There were only 312 gainers compared to 633 losers. Volume was acceptable; with about 1.8 billion shares trading hands. Shares traded valued at 3 billion ringgits. Gainers were Petra Energy, VADS, KNM, BAT and RHBCap while losers were the other cousin Petra, IOIProp,Boustead, DIGI and LPF.

Portfolio stocks - mixed performance.

Good performers were KPS and JAKS. KPS added 2 sen to RM1.90 on a volume of 125 million shares. I think the water-play game is about to begin. JAKS followed closely at 86.5 sen for a 1.5 sen gained after an intra-day high of 90.5 sen. Volume was 261 million shares. Taliworks added 3 sen to RM2.22 with a volume of 20 million shares.

Bad performers-Welli takes the kueh kochee again. It is now hiding under the seabed.It lost 6 sen to RM1.24 sen. Just who are the suckers dumping it to the collectors? Resorts is playing slow slide, down 6 sen to RM4.14. Still on heavy volume-355 million shares.

Genting is playing footsie, a plus and minus game. It ended unchanged at RM8.55 with some 70 million shares traded. Should move up tomorrow. BJ Sports Toto broke the RM5.00 support level to RM 4.92, losing 8 sen. Metronic stayed morose at its overnight level of 23.5 sen. Volume was better at 23 million shares. RCE was disappointing in spite of the earlier charge to RM1.10. It finished at RM1.04 for a 4 sen loss. Volume is still respectable at 70 million shares.

AMBD's charge was checked and it lost 0.5 sen to 46 after touching 50.5 sen in the morning. I will not be tracking this stock as it has surpassed my level of 45 sen. I will come back to it when it falls back to below 40 sen. Anything is possible in this fickled backboneless dilly-dally market.

Another dull listless market in spite of the charge in the morning led by Petra Energy.

So let us get on our knees and pray Dow Jones will shoot to the moon tonight so that we can enjoy a better Bursar day tomorrow.

Heartsong