Bursa Malaysia higher in early trade
KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia rebounded from yesterday's easier close to open marginally higher this morning despite the mixed performance overnight on Wall Street.
At 9.10am, the benchmark FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) rose 2.73 points, or 0.16%, to 1,721.06 from Wednesday's close of 1,718.33. The index opened 3.38 points higher at 1,721.71.
Meanwhile, market breadth was positive with gainers outpacing losers by 141 to 92 while 178 counters were unchanged, 1,446 untraded and 45 others were suspended.
Turnover stood at 85.16 million shares worth RM51.41 million.
JF Apex Securities said the FBM KLCI was expected to remain under pressure and move between 1,700 and 1,730 points following yesterday's lacklustre performance.
"Meanwhile, the US markets ended mixed with technology counters lifting Nasdaq while the Dow and S&P closed slightly lower as investors awaited new details on tax reform. The European stocks ended flat following uncertainty in 'Britain exit' negotiations," it said in a note today.
Among heavyweights, TNB and CIMB rose two sen each to RM15.64 and RM5.99, respectively, Petronas Chemicals was four sen up to RM7.42, Axiata gained a sen to RM5.38 and Maxis was three sen up to RM5.94.
Public Bank was flat at RM20.02. Maybank fell one sen to RM9.25.
Of the actives, Kejuruteraan Asastera went up one sen to 26 sen, Hibiscus Petroleum improved 1.5 sen to RM77.5 sen and Inix Technologies edged up half-a-sen to 9.5 sen.
Asia Poly and Diversified Gateway Solutions were flat at 11.5 sen and 7.5 sen respectively.
On the scoreboard, the FBM Emas Index surged 21.58 points to 12,368.31, FBMT 100 Index was up 21.77 points to 12,041.95 and the FBM Emas Syariah Index rose 27.84 points to 12,839.74.
The FBM Ace declined 7.07 points to 6,241.61.
The FBM 70 increased 36.97 points to 15,221.02.
Sector-wise, the Finance Index gained 6.28 points to 15,985.11 and the Industrial Index bagged 13.89 points to 3,172.17.
The Plantation Index was 38.11 points lower at 7,849.49.
The physical price of gold as at 9.30am stood at RM160.51 per gramme, down seven sen from RM160.58 at 5pm yasterday. — Bernama