KUALA LUMPUR: Blue chips piled on their gains early Wednesday, supported by fund buying of Public Bank and Petronas Gas while trading volume crossed one billion shares in the first hour.
At 10.02am, the KLCI was up 6.22 points or 0.35% to 1,784.69. Turnover was 1.03 billion shares valued at RM497.51mil. There were 331 gainers, 272 losers and 342 counters unchanged.
Reuters reported Asian stocks followed global indexes higher on Wednesday, as strong earnings and manufacturing data boosted risk appetite, while expectations that the Federal Reserve will signal a June rate increase later in the session lifted the dollar.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 0.1% early on Wednesday, within a hair of a near-two-year high hit on Tuesday.
Hong Kong and South Korea are closed for the Buddha's birthday, and Japan is shut for the rest of the week for the Golden Week holiday.
On the outlook for the market, Kenanga Investment Bank Research said the KLCI had on Tuesday kicked off the week with a buoyant mood on the back of gains from banking stocks and the firmer Ringgit against the greenback at RM4.3273, leading the key index to surge 10.41 points to close at 1,778.47.
“Chart-wise, the underlying index has staged a breakout from its resistance-turned-support level of 1,776 (S1) to settle at a multi-month high level.
“Primary trend remains positively intact underpinned by the bullish convergence of MACD and upward trending RSI. If the bulls manage to maintain its positive momentum, the benchmark index could look to gear higher to retest its immediate overhead resistance of 1,800 (R1) this week.
“On a side note, we observe that technical readings from both daily RSI and Stochastic are in deep overbought levels. Thus, we do not discount the possibility of a healthy retracement going forward with support levels seen at 1,776 9S1)/1,760 (S2),” it said.
Public Bank and Petronas Gas rose 20 sen each to RM20.44 and RM19.
Poly Glass Fibre jumped 28 sen to 88.5 sen with 3.11 million shares done while Caring adding 18 sen to RM1.90, YLI 16.5 sen to RM65 sen and Vitrox 13 sen to RM5.89. HL Industries gained 12 sen to RM10.34.
Among the consumer stocks, Nestle added 36 sen to 83 and Dutch Lady
was up 20 sen to RM58 but Carlsberg fell eight sen to RM14.46.
Petron lost six sen to RM7.09 while Yinson and Westports shed five sen each to RM3.33 and RM3.90 while Tasco eased four sen to RM2.35 on profit taking.
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