BURSA Malaysia extended earlier gains to finish higher on Thursday due to improving market sentiment across the region and the broadly positive cues overnight from Wall Street, a dealer said.
At 5pm, the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) rose 1.16% or 18.20 points to 1,580.53 from 1,562.33 at yesterday’s close.
The barometer index, which opened 8.38 points stronger at 1,570.71, moved between 1,567.77 and 1,581.27 throughout the session today.
Overall market breadth remained positive with gainers outpacing decliners 608 to 421, while 382 counters were unchanged, 876 untraded and 13 others suspended.
Total turnover declined to 3.08 billion units worth RM3.40 bil against 3.5 billion units worth RM3.51 bil at yesterday’s close.
Rakuten Trade Sdn Bhd vice-president of equity research Thong Pak Leng said key indices remained on an upward trajectory across the regional peers amid slightly easing worries about inflation following a drop in commodity prices.
“Japan’s Nikkei 225 and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng surged 3.94% and 1.27% respectively as investors are optimistic amid the ongoing talks to diffuse the Russia-Ukraine crisis,” he added.
As for the local bourse, he said the FBM KLCI continued to trend higher as investors were also exuberant on the plan of reopening international borders on April 1, 2022.
“We are cautiously optimistic given the improvement on the local market sentiment and foreign support but investors are staying alert on the increasing market risks, volatility as well as external uncertainties,” he pointed out.
As such, Thong anticipated the FBM KLCI to trend within the range of 1,570-1,590 towards the weekend with immediate resistance at 1,600 with support at 1,570.
Bursa Malaysia heavyweights Public Bank added 12 sen to RM4.52, Maybank and CIMB expanded 14 sen to RM8.95 and RM5.03 respectively, Maxis increased 15 sen to RM4.17 and Tenaga Nasional appreciated 18 sen to RM9.
As for the actives, DNeX fell 5 sen to RM1.00, Hibiscus Petroleum eased 14 sen to RM1.20, Dataprep declined 3 sen to 33.5 sen, Fitters Diversified shed half-a-sen to 17 sen, while SMTrack rose 1.5 sen to 10 sen. – March 10, 2022
