KUALA LUMPUR, May 14 — Shares on Bursa Malaysia bucked regional trends to close higher today lifted by gains in selected plantation heavyweight counters as well as Petronas Chemicals and TNB.

At 5pm today, the benchmark FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) rose 4.53 points to 1,807.55, after hovering between 1,803.63 and 1,807.9 throughout the day.

A dealer said the local stock market remained resilient despite the weaker regional markets which drifted after weak US retail sales figures suggested the world’s largest economy is struggling to maintain growth momentum.

The US Commerce Department reported retail sales, a key part of consumer spending that drives most of the US economy, stagnated in April after rising 1.1 per cent in March, beating the average consensus estimate of a 0.2 per cent increase.

Year-on-year, retail sales rose 0.9 per cent, the weakest growth since 2009.

On the scoreboard, the FBM Emas Index rose 26.06 points to 12,466.72, the FBMT100 Index improved 25.36 points to 12,142.16 and the FBM Emas Syariah Index increased 18.891 points to 12,943.07.

The FBM Ace went up 26.82 points to 7,001.58 and the FBM 70 climbed 8.85 points to 13,504.33.

The Finance Index jumped 50.7 points to 16,058.96 and the Plantation Index increased 16.55 points to 7,502.66 while the Industrial Index eased 11.98 points to 3,254.6.

Gainers led losers 411 to 355, with 359 counters unchanged, 668 counters untraded and 27 others suspended.

Total volume declined to 1.57 billion units worth RM1.79 billion from yesterday’s 1.68 billion units worth RM2 billion.

Of the heavyweights, Maybank added two sen to RM9.28, TNB garnered eight sen to RM13.88 and Axiata gained six sen to RM6.79.

Public Bank and Sime Darby lost two sen each to RM19.16 and RM9.02 respectively.

Among actives, JAG edged up half-a-sen to 15.5 sen and Bioalpha gained one sen to 34.5 sen.

Vsolar, Kanger and Nexgram were flat at 15.5 sen, 23.5 sen and 12 sen respectively.

Main Market volume decreased to 886.01 million shares worth RM1.59 billion from 927.28 million shares worth RM1.8 billion yesterday.

Turnover on the ACE Market contracted to 588.17 million shares valued at RM154.09 from 643.78 million shares valued at RM163.29 million yesterday.

Warrants shrank to 98.5 million units worth RM41.01 million from 115.95 million units worth RM39.84 million previously.

Consumer products accounted for 78.99 million shares traded on the Main Market, industrial products (200.99 million), construction (40.85 million), trade and services (326.98 million), technology (83.46 million), infrastructure (13.74 million), SPAC (15.13 million), finance (39.54 million), hotels (706,800), properties (65.82 million), plantations (12.27 million), mining (27,000), REITs (7.43 million) and closed/fund (14,000). — Bernama