Bursa Malaysia opens higher on bargain-hunting
KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia opened higher today as bargain-hunting emerged following yesterday's losses and the bounce on Wall Street.
The attack close to Britain's Parliament, which killed five people, did not impact Asian equity markets including Malaysia.
At 9.05am, the benchmark FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) stood at 1,753.2, up 4.9 points, from Wednesday's close of 1,748.3.
Earlier, the index opened 2.36 points higher at 1,750.66.
On the broader market, gainers outpaced decliners 196 to 68 with 173 counters unchanged, 1,292 untraded and 23 others were suspended.
Turnover stood at 205.02 million shares worth RM67.34 million.
In a note, Hong Leong Investment Bank Research said sentiment on Bursa Malaysia turned positive on bargain-hunting.
"Traders are likely to look for opportunities within the fundamentally solid small-cap and oversold stocks," it added.
Among heavyweights, Maybank rose six sen to RM9, TNB eased four sen to RM13.68, Public Bank was flat at RM19.96 and Sime Darby gained eight sen to RM9.34. Of actively-traded stocks, Daya Materials was unchanged at 9.5 sen, Dataprep rose 5.5 sen to 67.5 sen and Sterling Progress added one sen to 21.4 sen.
The FBM Emas Index increased 29.32 points to 12,401.45, FBMT 100 Index was 27.77 points higher at 12,053.31 and the FBM Emas Shariah Index gained 20.47 points to 12,806.37.
The FBM 70 was 10.93 points better at 14,441.75 and the FBM Ace improved 27.96 points to 5,614.03.
Sector-wise, the Plantation Index gained 13.99 points to 8,244.37, the Finance Index advanced 61.92 points to 15,827.32 and the Industrial Index inched up 16.36 points to 3,296.27.
FBP FBP VMDGold futures contract on Bursa Malaysia Derivatives was unchanged, in early trade today, on lack of demand for the precious metal.
March 2017, April 2017, May 2017 and June 2017 remained flat at RM176.60 per gramme, RM176.15, RM176.75 and RM176.65 per gramme, respectively.
Turnover was nil while open interest amounted to 342 contracts.
At 9.30am, physical gold was up 10 sen at RM171.76 a gramme. — Bernama