Malaysian stocks ended lower on Wednesday to snap a nine-day winning streak as investors booked profits ahead of the release of fourth-quarter GDP data.
The Kuala Lumpur Composite Index, up nearly eight percent over the past two weeks, closed down 0.32 percent at 872.03 points, off the day's low of 866.17.
Volume was a strong 906 million shares, with 587 decliners and 295 gainers.
But shares in second-largest lender Commerce bucked the trend with a three percent rise to 5.35 ringgit ($1.40) following an overall re-rating of local banks following Singapore's Temasek news.
Singapore's state investment agency Temasek Holdings is set to buy 30 percent of Malaysia's smallest lender Alliance Bank at over two times book value, a new pricing benchmark.
Banks like Commerce trade at only 1.6-1.7 times book value.
Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's decision to skip this weekend's G-15 meeting in Venezuela boosted weeks-old speculation that snap elections would be held next month.
Shares of AMMB, the country's fifth-largest lender, were suspended pending an announcement on Friday.
AMMB said it would take finance unit AMFB Holdings private and list its investment bank in a restructuring to be detailed on Friday. The shares are suspended for three days from Thursday.
Fund managers said investors had already priced in expectations of strong gross domestic product growth in the last quarter of 2003, and were likely to continue taking profit unless there were surprises to the upside.
"The index has already shot up a lot. In fact, a bit too much, too fast," said Choo Swee Kee, a fund manager who oversees 700 million ringgit ($184 million) at KLCS Asset Management.
A Reuters poll on Tuesday estimated Malaysia's economy grew by 5.7 percent in the October-December period and 5.0 percent for the whole of 2003.
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