Market higher at midday on continuous buying

KUALA LUMPUR: Fund buying of Tenaga Nasional Bhd (TNB), Petronas Gas Bhd and Axiata Group Bhd helped push the FBM KLCI to a higher close at midday on Thursday, extending its gains for the fourth day.

At 12.30 pm, the FBM-KLCI was at 1,630.71 up 7.04 points. The index opened  2.69 points lower at 1,620.98. There were 321 gainers, 380 losers and 313 counters traded unchanged on the Bursa Malaysia. Turnover stood at 1.11 billion units worth RM934.98mil.

Dealers said the performance of our local bourse was mainly driven by buying interest in heavy weight counters such as TNB, Petronas Gas and Petronas Dagangan. 

TNB rose 22 sen to RM12.54, Petronas Gas jumped 50 sen to RM17.32, Petronas Dagangan advanced 74 sen to RM25.54 and Axiata rose 10 sen to RM4.60.

AirAsia, the most actively traded counter on Bursa, added 22 sen to RM2.85 with 66.27 million shares done. The budget carrier announcing a special dividend of 90 sen per share. 

Bumi Armada rose 0.5 sen to 20.5 sen with 56.2 million shares done and Ekovest added one sen to 78.5 sen with 45.2 million shares traded.

Losers on Bursa Malaysia included British American Tobacco, Nestle and Perstima.

Reuters reported that analysts were largely considering Malaysian stocks to be defensives given its resilience in the wake of a bruising trade war, which has roiled most global financial markets.

Elsewhere in the region, China stocks dropped as trade war fears heightened after Beijing stepped up the rhetoric against Washington.  The CSI300 index fell 1.1% to 3,622.93 points while the Shanghai Composite Index lost 0.8% to 2,890.58 points.

The Hang Seng index dropped 0.4% to 27,121.13 points, Japan’s Nikkei fell 0.85% to 20,824 while the Seoul stock market’s main Kospi gained 4.36 points or 0.22% to 2,027.68 points.