KUALA LUMPUR, April 21 — Shares in Bursa Malaysia opened lower but picked up momentum thereafter lifted by gains in selected heavyweights such as United Plantations and PPB Group.

At 9.18 am, the benchmark FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) was 4.47 points better at 1,857.16 after opening 1.08 points lower at 1,851.61.

Leading the top gainers list were United Plantations, which rose 60 sen or 2.4 per cent to RM25.58 and PPB Group grew 20 sen or 1.23 per cent to RM16.40.

Turnover stood at 279.51 million shares worth RM125.74 million.

Market breadth was positive with gainers leading losers 248 to 85, while 229 counters were unchanged, 1,066 untraded and 20 others were suspended.

A dealer expects increased demand for risky assets such as stocks in emerging markets due to positive signals from the US Federal Reserve on its economic recovery and job market improvement.

On the scoreboard, the Plantation Index rose 21.01 points to 8,945.35, the Industrial Index added 11.24 points to 3,198.06 and the Finance Index gained 33.16 points to 16,981.7.

The FBM Emas Index increased 29.02 points to 12,899.89, FBMT100 Index garnered 26.14 points to 12,530.27, the FBM 70 added 13.9 points to 14,145.17 and the FBM Ace jumped 42.12 points to 6,921.29.

Among actives, 1Utopia lost half-a-sen to 8.5 sen while Asia Bioenergy and PDZ Holdings gained half-sen-each to 10.5 sen and 16 sen, respectively.

Among heavyweights, Maybank rose 4.0 sen to RM9.87, Public Bank inched up 2.0 sen to RM20.06, CIMB was 1.0 sen higher at RM7.40 while TNB was flat at RM11.90. — Bernama