KUALA LUMPUR, May 2 — Bursa Malaysia opened higher this morning on strong buying support in line with the bullish overnight performance on Wall Street.
At 9.05am, the benchmark FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) stood at 1,771.29, up 3.23 points, from Friday’s close of 1,768.06.
The key index opened 1.10 points higher at 1,769.16.
The market breadth was positive as gainers led losers 248 to 92 with 236 counters unchanged, 1,174 untraded while 18 others were suspended.
Turnover stood at 228.30 million shares worth RM92.70 million.
The market was closed yesterday for the Labour Day public holiday.
In a note today, Public Investment Bank Bhd said the FBM KLCI opened with a positive bias today after Wall Street’s so-called fear gauge slipped to its lowest level since before the credit crisis overnight.
“The gauge measures the prices of short-term US equity options and is constructed to reflect how volatile traders think stocks will be in the coming month,” it said.
Among heavyweights, Public Bank, IHH Healthcare and Axiata added two sen each to RM19.98, RM6.20 and RM5.17, respectively, while Maybank and Tenaga remained unchanged at RM9.50 and RM13.94, repsectively.
Of gainers, KLK rose 38 sen to RM24.90, PPB Group advanced 26 sen to RM17.16, SCGM gained 20 sen to RM4.25 and MAHB was 19 sen higher at RM7.79.
Of actives, KGroup and XOX inched up half-a-sen each to 6.5 sen and 13 sen, respectively, Airasia X and Dagang Nexchange improved 1.5 sen each to 46.5 sen and 61.5 sen, respectively, while IRIS fell 1.5 sen to 19 sen.
The FBM Emas Index expanded 26.03 points to 12,657.55, the FBM Emas Shariah Index increased 16.62 points to 12,989.11 and the FBMT100 Index jumped 25.56 points to 12,284.82.
The FBM 70 surged 43.37 points to 15,124.34 and the FBM Ace grew 2.40 points to 6,244.56.
Sector-wise, the Plantation Index climbed 39.04 points to 8,136.38, the Finance Index was 33.13 points better at 16,334.30 and the Industrial Index went up 1.55 points to 3,220.72. — Bernama
