Bursa Malaysia rebounds to close higher

KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia reversed earlier losses and finished yesterday’s session higher on the back of buying support recovery in penny stocks, as well as big capital stocks.

At 5pm, the benchmark FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI finished at 1,833.15, up 4.32 points from Friday’s close of 1,828.83. It opened 6.38 points higher at 1,835.21.

The market breadth was positive as gainers outnumbered losers 519 to 503, while 377 counters were unchanged, 461 untraded and 32 others suspended.

Turnover slipped to 4.62 billion units valued at RM2.87 from last Friday’s 3.83 billion units worth RM3.19 billion.

The market barometer moved between 1,825.86 and 1,835.21 the whole day.

DLady, Harta and HLBank topped the gainers’ list, whereby DLady added 92 sen while the rest added 48 sen each, respectively.

Head of Research at InterPacific Research Sdn Bhd Pong Teng Siew said foreign interests were seen in banking and oil and gas counters, as well as glove manufacturing companies.

“HLBank, Harta, as well as o&g stocks Sapura, UMWOG and Sumatec, which used to be expensive before have now turned to be penny stocks,” he said when asked on the smaller Bursa Malaysia’s transaction value against the volume at 5pm yesterday.

The slight difference between gainers and losers was attributed to the investors pulling back from technology stocks, mainly prompted by the strong ringgit.

“Apart from that, we can see some profit-taking in property and consumer goods counters,” he noted.

Of the heavyweights, Maybank and TNB were both flat at RM9.87 and RM15.82, respectively, PBBank and CIMB added six sen each to RM20.96 and RM6.89, respectively, while PChem reduced 10 sen to RM8.0.

Among actives, Sumatec advanced one sen to 11.5 sen, DBE improved half-a-sen to 3.5 sen, and HuaAn inched up one sen to 56 sen.

The FBM Emas Index perked 43.93 points to 13,239.76, the FBMT 100 Index went up 48.16 points to 12,908.76 and the FBM Emas Shariah Index was 13.73 points better at 13,641.19.

The FBM 70 soared 121.29 points to 16,593.66, but the FBM Ace slipped 9.60 points to 6,703.52.

Sector-wise, the Finance Index bagged 117.35 points to 17,354.33, the Plantation Index advanced 3.79 points to 8,041.66, but the Industrial Index down 17.41 points to 3,350.61.

The Main Market increased to 3.2 billion worth RM2.55 billion from 2.59 billion units worth RM2.96 billion on last Friday.

Volume on the ACE Market expanded to 790.65 million valued at RM196.19 million from 597.76 million shares valued at RM109.16 million.

Warrants’ volume was slightly lower at 618.32 million units valued at RM112.5 million from 638.59 million units worth RM124.69 million previously.

Consumer products accounted for 441.63 million shares traded on the Main Market, industrial products (535.56 million), construction (108.95 million), trade and services (1.72 billion), technology (155.65 million), infrastructure (4.79 million), SPAC (6.52 million), finance (83.65 million), hotels (2.05 million), properties (97.68 million), plantations (33.26 million), mining (418,500), REITs (5.91 million), and closed/fund (42,500).

For further information on stocks and prices, please visit www.bursamalaysia.com.