BELOW are excerpts of viewpoints from two selected research houses on what investors can expect in the day ahead:
Berjaya Research
The FBM KLCI snapped a three-day pullback on Thursday, lifted by gains in selected oil & gas (O&G) heavyweights as crude oil prices extended their rally amid renewed geopolitical tensions in the Middle East.
Trading activity, however, continues to moderate with total market volume at 3.20 billion shares from 3.43 billion shares in the previous session.
Market breadth remained negative with 598 decliners outpacing 417 advancers as selling activities on the broader market remain unabated.
We expect the FBM KLCI to turn volatile as investors adopt a more cautious stance following the escalating geopolitical tension in Middle East which propelled Brent oil prices beyond US$100/barrel.
Near-term sentiment is likely to be choppy, taking cue from the weakness on Wall Street overnight.
Meanwhile, on-going US corporate earnings season will be closely watched for further clues on the strength of corporate fundamentals and the broader economic outlook.
Elevated geopolitical risks and earnings-related volatility may keep market sentiment guarded in the near term.
Technically, the key index has formed a doji candlestick and is attempting to find stability. The immediate resistance remains located at 1,735 points, followed by 1,740 points.
On the contrary, near-term supports are pegged at 1,700 points and 1,680 points respectively.
Malacca Securities Research
Tracking Wall Street’s overnight sell-down, we believe the FBM KLCI will follow suit, particularly in the technology sector.
While technically, tech stocks might experience a pullback, fundamentally we continue to favour Frontken Corp Bhd and Inari Amertron Bhd.
This comes about as they benefit from higher workloads from TSMC and Broadcom following Google’s CAPEX upgrade while Dagang NeXchange Bhd will also benefit from holding a multi-year partnership to operate Google Distributed Cloud (GDC) services as a managed provider in Malaysia.
Lastly, with Brent crude continuing to rally above the US$100/barrel level, we believe sentiment should bode well for chemical companies like PETRONAS Chemicals Group Bhd and TMK Chemical Bhd.
The FBM KLCI rose marginally with the technical indicators still showing positive signals as the MACD Histogram is in the positive territory while the RSI is hovering above 50, suggesting that the positive momentum is intact.
Near-term resistance sits at 1,729-1,734 with support anchored at 1,694-1,699. – July 24, 2026
