Bursa Malaysia opens marginally higher

KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia opened marginally higher today, supported by mild buying interests in small-capitalised stocks and lower-liners, dealers said.
At 9.13am, the benchmark FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) stood at 1,755.00, up 1.93 points, from Friday's close of 1,753.07.
The key index opened 0.98 of-a-point higher at 1,754.05.
Hong Leong Investment Bank said Bursa Malaysia was expected to be within the uptrend channel but after the steep rally last week, stocks on the local front might take a breather this week.
"Any pullback on the benchmark FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) will be deemed as healthy for short-term accumulation decision.
"Stocks on the local front may take a breather over the near term as the FBM KLCI is slightly overbought," it said in a note.
On the broader market, gainers outpaced losers by 186 to 91 with 196 counters unchanged, 1,385 counters untraded and 27 others suspended.
Turnover stood at 174.76 million shares worth RM80.62 million.
Among heavyweights, Maybank eased six sen to RM9.48, Tenaga rose eight sen to RM15.52, Public Bank eased two sen to RM20.74 and Petronas Chemicals increased two sen to RM7.47.
Among actively-traded stocks were PUC, which added one sen to 29.5 sen, Dialog Group fell one sen to RM2.46 and CNI added half-a-sen to 14 sen.
On the scoreboard, the FBM Emas Index rose 3.40 points to 12,592.24, FBMT100 Index gained 3.95 points to 12,260.80 and the FBM Emas Syariah Index improved 29.21 points to 12,919.94.
The FBM 70 was 30.06 points better at 15,490.77. The FBM Ace was up 18.62 points to 6,447.04.
On a sectoral basis, the Industrial Index fell 6.11 points to 3,174.05, Finance Index dipped 59.68 points to 16,526.83 and the Plantation Index was 5.21 points higher to 7,815.32.
The physical price of gold as at 9.30am stood at RM159.13 per gramme, down 51 sen from RM159.64 at 5pm last Friday. — Bernama