Bursa Malaysia ends on firm note
KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia closed on a firmer note today on the back of buying support in selected heavyweights, particularly trade/service and finance-related counters, dealers said.
At 5pm, the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) finished at 1,632.47, up 2.74 points from Tuesday's close of 1,629.73, after moving between 1,627.86 and 1,634.2.
The index opened 3.42 points higher at 1,633.15.
Decliners led gainers by 414 to 283, with 377 counters unchanged, 624 untraded and 23 others suspended.
Volume, however, fell to 1.04 billion units valued at RM1.37 billion versus 1.08 billion units valued at RM1.55 billion on Tuesday.
A dealer said that Bursa Malaysia's firmer performance was in line with most Asian bourses.
Japan's Nikkei 225 rose 0.74% to 18,496.69, South Korea's Kospi was up 0.1% to 1,991.89, Singapore's Straits Times Index gained 0.28% to 2,957.26 and China's Shanghai Composite went up 0.71% to 3,222.24.
Meanwhile, FXTM Chief Market Strategist Hussein Sayed said markets were acting in such a weird way, with bad news received with open arms.
"Investors are getting used to bad news, and the lessons learnt in the past couple of months were implemented on Monday after the Italian referendum results.
"It's true that a "No" vote was priced in to some extent, but the heavy defeat with a 60% lead for those who rejected the reform of the constitution suggests that anti-establishment populists in Italy are on the rise," he said.
Among heavyweights, Maybank, IHH Healthcare and MISC rose one sen each to RM7.89, RM6.40 and RM7.29 respectively, while Public Bank improved two sen to RM19.64 and TNB declined two sen to RM13.98.
As for actives, Trive Property and Green Packet went up half-a-sen each to 9.5 sen and 27.5 sen respectively, while APFT and YTL were down one sen to four sen and RM1.53 respectively.
Hibiscus Petroleum trimmed half-a-sen to 30 sen and SMTrack declined two sen to 2.5 sen.
The FBM Emas Index was up 8.85 points to 11,394.83, the FBMT 100 Index expanded 10.18 points to 11,132.68 and the FBM Emas Shariah Index increased 10.81 points to 11,932.74.
The FBM 70 shed 19.07 points to 12,997.17 and the FBM Ace erased 46.06 points to 4,703.58.
Sector-wise, the Finance Index trimmed 13.68 points to 14,279.7, the Plantation Index declined 8.46 points to 7,701.87 but the Industrial Index added 6.09 points to 3,089.38.
Main Market turnover contracted to 661.53 million units worth RM1.31 billion from 764.97 million units worth RM1.49 billion on Tuesday.
The ACE Market volume improved to 178.57 million shares valued at RM20.38 million from 150.14 million shares valued at RM22.23 million.
Warrants increased to 193.03 million units worth RM39.27 million from 169.3 million units worth RM32.39 million previously.
Consumer products accounted for 40.42 million shares traded on the Main Market, industrial products (129.28 million), construction (62.12 million), trade and services (274.1 million), technology (43.43 million), infrastructure (8.07 million), SPAC (4.8 million), finance (30.35 million), hotels (18,000), properties (30.97 million), plantations (20.87 million), mining (64,300), REITs (16.93 million) and closed/fund (61,800).
The physical price of gold as at 5pm stood at RM161.51 per gramme, down 38 sen from RM161.51 at 5pm yesterday. — Bernama