KUALA LUMPUR, May 12 — Bursa Malaysia opened mixed in early trade today, buoyed by renewed positive sentiment with upside bias towards banking stocks despite the weaker performance on Wall Street, a dealer said.

At 9.15am, the benchmark FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) rose 1.74 points to 1,557.67 from Wednesday’s close of 1,555.93.

The index opened 1.01 points higher at 1,556.94, but retreated thereafter and recovered after nine minutes into trading.

On the broader market, losers surpassed gainers 246 to 161, while 239 counters were unchanged, 1,596 untraded and 19 others suspended.

Total turnover stood at 264.9 million shares worth RM134.4 million.

Rakuten Trade Sdn Bhd vice-president of equity research Thong Pak Leng said the FBM KLCI may face some headwinds today amid heightened regional market volatility mirroring the weakness in US equities overnight.

"Therefore, we expect the index to trend within the 1,545-1,560 range today as we believe the impact from the latest Bank Negara Malaysia’s announcement to increase the Overnight Policy Rate (OPR) by 25 basis points may be positive for banks," he said.

Among the heavyweights, Maybank added six sen to RM9.16, Public Bank was two sen up at RM4.67, Petronas Chemicals and IHH Healthcare gained five sen to RM9.94 and RM6.47 respectively, and CIMB inched up one sen to RM5.11.

Of the actives, CSH Alliance and MYEG inched down half-a-sen to 12 sen and 88 sen respectively, Serba Dinamik recovered 1.5 sen to 7.5 sen, and PUC added half-a-sen to 5.5 sen.

On the index board, FBM Emas Index decreased 4.97 points to 11,107.37, FBMT 100 Index erased 4.36 points to 10,781.57, FBM Emas Shariah Index was 23.14 points lower at 11,491.98, FBM ACE shed 19.98 points to 5,340.16 and FBM 70 dipped 72.30 points to 13,182.27.

Sector-wise, the Financial Services Index improved 55.30 points to 16,821.42, the Industrial Products and Services Index was 0.45 of-a-point lower at 196.93, and the Plantation Index gave up 44.21 points to 8,189.81. — Bernama