By Nurul Jannah Kamaruddin
KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 25 (NNN-Bernama) — Malaysia’s stock exchange, Bursa Malaysia, held on at a two-month high on Wednesday amid strong investor appetite, in sync with the regional bourses’ performance and rally in the oil market.
At 5 pm, the benchmark FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) climbed 16.43 points to the day’s high of 1,569.80 from Tuesday’s close of 1,553.37.
The market bellwether opened 1.21 points higher at 1,554.58, which was also its lowest level today.
Market breadth was fairly mixed with 532 decliners and 509 gainers, while 468 counters were unchanged, 742 untraded and nine others suspended.
Turnover was unchanged at 4.55 billion shares, but the value slid to RM2.89 billion (US$1=RM4.205) from RM3.15 billion on Tuesday.
Bank Islam Malaysia Bhd economist Adam Mohamed Rahim said political stability was seen to be strengthening, with the next anticipated matter being the new line-up of cabinet ministers.
“Among the constituents of the FBM KLCI, Press Metal led gainers with a 4.8 per cent advance followed by Tenaga Nasional (TNB), which gained 3.1 per cent during the day, while the Bursa Malaysia Industrial Products and Services Index recorded the largest gain of 1.7 per cent among sectoral indexes,” he said.
Overseas, investors lauded positive United States (US) vaccination news, whereby the US Food and Drug Administration on Monday issued full approval for the Pfizer/BioNTech two-dose vaccine.
Other countries such as China have also been exhibiting encouraging prospects in terms of the handling of COVID-19 with no cases of locally transmitted infections in the latest data.
In addition, Brent crude oil prices stayed above US$70 a barrel, boosting selected energy counters.
Among the heavyweights, Press Metal surged 24 sen to RM5.24, TNB jumped 31 sen to RM10.28, Petronas Chemicals was 21 sen stronger at RM8.15, Maxis added 12 sen to RM4.65, and Axiata gained nine sen to RM4.04.
Meanwhile, Maybank increased one sen to RM8.33 and Public Bank dropped one sen to RM4.10.
Among the actives, Kanger International and Sapura Energy were flat at six sen and 12 sen respectively, MMAG went down one sen to 10.5 sen, Focus Dynamics increased half-a-sen to five sen, and Avillion lost two sen to 13.5 sen.
On the index board, the FBM Emas Index improved 84.11 points to 11,449.46, the FBMT 100 Index was 87.41 points higher at 11,158.59, the FBM Emas Shariah Index gained 130.56 points to 12,551.90, the FBM 70 rose 2.24 points to 14,933.64 and the FBM ACE lost 38.37 points to 7,289.12.
Sector-wise, the Plantation Index increased 48.17 points to 6,663.01, the Financial Services Index added 45.54 points to 15,381.95 and the Industrial Products and Services Index edged up 3.22 points to 194.59.
Main Market volume slightly increased to 2.66 billion shares worth RM2.53 billion from Tuesday’s 2.65 billion shares worth RM2.74 billion.
Warrants turnover eased to 394.23 million units valued at RM51.05 million compared to 406.88 million units worth RM56.40 million on Tuesday.
Volume on the ACE Market inched up to 1.50 billion shares worth RM316.58 million versus 1.48 billion shares worth RM352.91 million previously.
Consumer products and services accounted for 593.81 million shares traded on the Main Market, industrial products and services (780.62 million), construction (85.64 million), technology (288.36 million), SPAC (nil), financial services (92.07 million), property (146.47 million), plantation (57.21 million), REITs (8.66 million), closed/fund (58,000), energy (457.95 million), healthcare (45.56 million), telecommunications and media (42.02 million), transportation and logistics (39.08 million), and utilities (20.57 million).
— NNN-BERNAMA