Late buying pushes Bursa Malaysia to end marginally higher
KUALA LUMPUR: Last-minute buying mainly in small-cap stocks as well as selected heavyweights helped to push Bursa Malaysia to end yesterday’s session on a positive note, erasing losses from the earlier sessions.
Buying were led by industrial products and services, property and transportation and logistics linked counters.
At 5 pm, the benchmark FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) added 1.91 points or 0.12 per cent to 1,584.90 from Wednesday’s close of 1,582.99.
The barometer index opened 0.89 of-a-point lower at 1,582.10 and oscillated from a low of 1,576.33 to a high of 1,586.55 throughout the day.
On the broader market, gainers overpowered losers 625 to 489, while 465 counters were unchanged, 551 untraded and 11 others suspended.
Total volume rose to 8.04 billion units worth RM4.17 billion from 6.09 billion units worth RM4.93 billion recorded at Wednesday’s close.
Bursa Malaysia last recorded the eight-billion volume level about three weeks ago on Jan 12, 2021.
“The bourse hit 8.4 billion shares to be exact some three weeks ago...and with signs of pickup in US activities as US President Joe Biden pushes to win congressional passage of a US$1.9 trillion stimulus proposal, we foresee the sentiment to be bullish,” Bank Islam Malaysia Bhd economist Adam Mohamed Rahim told Bernama.
He said the expectations of a massive US stimulus would likely help buoy the local bourse.
An analyst said the lastminute buying came right a er the government’s update on the roll-out of Covid-19 vaccine programmes scheduled this month.
In his address yesterday evening, Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said the vaccine is Malaysia’s hope to combat this pandemic and the government managed to secured the vaccine produced by Pfizer and BioNTech which have shown a high effective rate of 95 per cent.
He said the vaccine would be made available for free for 80 per cent of the population or 26.5 million people.
Muhyiddin also urged the industry and public to fully comply with the standard operating procedures (SOPs) set by the government to ensure that business and trade can continue operations, thus help to break the Covid-19 chain.
On the bourse, heavyweights, Maybank slipped five sen to RM7.89, Public Bank shed two sen to RM4.08, Petronas Chemicals rose 11 sen to RM7.21 and Tenaga was four sen be er at RM9.70.
Of the actives, Lambo Group inched down half-a-sen to 2.5 sen, while Luster and Pegasus Heights added half-a-sen each to 22.5 sen and 2.5 sen respectively.