Malaysian bourse sharply higher

SHARE prices on Bursa Malaysia closed higher yesterday with investors buying into both heavyweights and lower liners following overnight gains on Wall Street and lower crude oil prices, dealers said.

At 5pm, the benchmark Kuala Lumpur Composite Index (KLCI) rose 29.84 points or 2.69 per cent to 1,139.41 after opening 8.04 points higher at 1,117.61.

According to some analysts, the uptrend in the local market will last for a couple of weeks as crude oil is expected to be traded sideways in the next three months.

Jupiter Securities' head of research, Pong Teng Siew, said with a lot of pent-up demand from investors now, the bourse will be on the rebound for the next couple of weeks "and to be interrupted by some profit-taking here and there".

At close, the Plantation Index gained 22.75 points to 6,325.76, the Industrial Index added 53.17 points to 2,441.64 and the Finance Index increased 302.18 points to 8,718.90.

The FBMEmas rose 199.83 points to 7561.21, the FBM30 advanced 213.49 points to 7325.85, the FBM2BRD went up 107.66 points to 5431.78 and the FBMMesdaq was +79.52 points higher at 4281.29.

The increase in trading saw gainers lead losers by 516 to 136 while 175 counters were unchanged, 536 untraded and 38 suspended.

Volume doubled to 656.377 million shares valued at RM1.179 billion from Tuesday's close of 329.505 million shares traded valued at RM783.748 million.

AirAsia, a beneficiary of falling oil prices, led the actives as it gained 12.5 sen to RM1.04, followed by MRCB which went up 5.5 sen to RM1.01 and IOI Corp which climbed five sen to RM5.60.

Resorts World rose 13 sen to RM2.70 and MLand gained 1.5 sen to 21 sen.

Among the heavyweights, Sime Darby and Maybank added 25 sen each to RM8.10 and RM7.35 while Public Bank and Tenaga Nasional increased 20 sen each to RM10.30 and RM8.10 respectively.

Bursa, Tanjong, British American Tobacco and Bumiputra-Commerce advanced 50 sen each to RM6.95, RM12.80, RM41.00 and RM8.30 respectively.

The KLCI futures contracts closed higher in line with the cash market on a rebound, dealers said.

July 2008 added 39.5 points to 1,142.0, August 2008 and December 2008 rose 42.0 points each to 1,135.0 and 1,105.0 respectively, and September 2008 advanced 42.5 points to 1,126.5. Turnover increased to 11,557 lots from 7,442 lots on Tuesday and open interest went up to 35,093 contracts from 34,773 contracts previously. - Bernama