All Market Updates.
31 January 2022 - Inflows in Southeast Asia Despite Interest Rate Worries Continue Biting
Majority of equity markets worldwide generally in red last week after the Federal Reserve signalled that they would begin raising interest rates in mid-March. On the regional front, Asian shares saw a mixed performance in-line with the volatility on Wall Street. Aside to that, Chinese stocks ended lower ahead of Lunar New Year. Foreign investors continue to enter Malaysia for the third week at a faster pace from the week prior.
27 January 2022 - Release of Financial Sector Blueprint 2022-2026
3 key themes: Finance for all, finance for transformation, finance for sustainability. BNM’s proposed improvements on microfinancing, alternative financing and onshore derivatives likely to benefit banks. The transition to a sustainable economy could bring large-scale changes to the financial industry. BNM will focus on regulating the digital banking and payment framework.
20 January 2022 - OPR Stayed at 1.75% as Economic Recovery Continues
BNM decided to keep the Overnight Policy Rate (OPR) unchanged at 1.75% in its first Monetary Policy Meeting of 2022, in line with our and market’s expectations. On the price developments, BNM views inflation to be manageable. BNM expects inflation to stay moderate in 2022. We believe the current focus of BNM’s monetary policy setting is to ensure a sustainable recovery of Malaysia’s economy, and we opine there is less pressure for BNM to quickly shift towards policy tightening.
11 January 2022 - Bouts of volatility to be expected from US Fed Actions
US Fed pulled a surprise with its December meeting minutes causing increased volatility in financial markets. Going forward, we can expect more intermittent knee-jerk market price movements in reaction to US Fed ongoing communications pertaining to its future course of monetary actions. However, mid-to-secular price trajectory of the equity market would be expected to correspond to the underlying earnings performance. Empirical data showed FBM KLCI went up during last hike cycle.
3 January 2022 - Bursa’s Five-Week Selling Streak Snapped
Majority of the equity markets worldwide ended in the green zone last week despite of concerns about inflationary pressures in 2022. It is worth to note that among the market that we tracked, KLCI index was the top performer last week, rose further by +3.37% to close at 1,567.53 points.