Jakarta Index Down On Profit Taking

Jakarta, Nov 19 (Antara) - The Jakarta composite share price index fell 2.36 percent in the opening trade on Tuesday on profit taking, analysts said. The index of the Indonesian Stock Exchange (BEI) opened 0.05 percent lower at 4,391.24 points with index of 45 most liquid stocks down 0.09 percent to 736.03 points. Trust Securities` chief researcher Reza Priyambada said market players tended to sell share taking profit after significant share price increase on Monday. Reza said technically the BEI index could rise further but he warned of sudden reversal. Regional markets such as Hang Seng recorded an increase of 0.51 percent in index to 23,780.10 points with Nikkei-225 index down 0.65 percent to 15,066.32 points and that of Straits Times gaining 0.02 percent to 3,203.90 points. Meanwhile, the rupiah value remained unchanged against the US dollar in inter-bank transactions in the first minutes of trading on Tuesday. Rupiah was stable at the level of 11,620 per US dollar but tended to weaken ahead of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) this week, Reza said. Investors are still worried about the result of the meeting that they chose to sell rupiah and invest in safe currency, he said. "The condition is in contrary to the positive sentiment with Fitch Rating maintaining Indonesian debt rating at triple B minus," he noted. Monex Investindo Futures` analyst Zulfirman Basir said the market players are still worried that the Fed would decide to cut its financial stimulus earlier. "Investors are awaiting the speech of the Fed governor this week looking for signals when the US central bank would cut its bond buying program," Zulfirman said.