SHARES on Bursa Malaysia were mostly down in line with the weaker regional market performance and overnight sell-down on Wall Street, a dealer said.
However, the FBM KLCI rebounded on late buying interest, mainly driven by plantation, and industrial product and services stocks amid the surge in oil prices.
At 5pm, the benchmark FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) rose 0.10% or 1.66 points to 1,598.10 from 1,596.44 at yesterday’s close.
The index, which opened 4.69 points better at 1,601.13, moved between 1,592.62 and 1,606.38 throughout the trading session.
On the broader market, losers thumped gainers 607 to 406, while 378 counters were unchanged, 856 untraded, and 18 others suspended.
Turnover improved to 3.23 billion units valued at RM3.68 bil from Tuesday’s 3.21 billion units worth RM3.25 bil.
At the time of writing, Brent Crude was 6.05% higher at US$111.32 per barrel.
Rakuten Trade Sdn Bhd vice-president of equity research Thong Pak Leng said crude oil price surged even though the United States and International Energy Agency had agreed to release 60 million barrels of crude reserves to restrain price increases.
“Investors are also concerned about aggressive US Federal Reserve interest rate hikes in the next few months due to the worsening geopolitical conflict,” he told Bernama.
As for the local bourse, Thong reckoned that investor sentiment would be cautious for the short term due to the heightened regional market volatility as a result of the geopolitical tensions.
“Nonetheless, we believe the overall outlook would remain positive due to attractive valuations and continuous strong foreign inflow.
“We reckon that oil and gas stocks to remain a short-term play due to the higher crude oil prices and anticipate the FBM KLCI to hover within the 1,590-1,610 range for the remainder of the week,” he said.
Among heavyweights, Maybank improved 4 sen to RM8.94, Petronas Chemicals added 17 sen to RM9.77, Press Metal gained 28 sen to RM7.07, Sime Darby Plantation rose 31 sen to RM5.22, while Public Bank eased 1 sen to RM4.41.
Of the actives, SMTrack lost half-a-sen to 22 sen, while Hibiscus Petroleum and Bumi Armada stayed at RM1.22 and 46.5 sen respectively. – March 2, 2022
