KUALA LUMPUR: The domestic market rebounded in the morning session after three days of losses as heavyweights Tenaga Nasional and Petronas Chemicals retraced losses ahead of the weekend.
Tenaga had seen three consecutive days of losses before ending the decline with a 18 sen gain to RM13.60 in morning trade.
Petronas Chemicals was in the red over four straight days and retraced 22 sen to RM7.84 in the early Friday session.
At 12.30pm, the FBM KLCI was up 7.99 points to 1,656.92. Of the 30 KLCI-linked counters, 21 were positive, five were down, three were flat and one untraded.
Trading volume on the stock exchange was 1.51 billion shares to a value of RM683.71mil. There were 417 gainers compared to 259 decliners and 383 counters unchanged.
Most active stocks in the morning session were Scomi up 1.5 sen to 10.5 sen, Sapura Energy
up one sen to 31 sen and KNM up two sen to 37 sen.
The sentiment in the overall global equities landscape improved Friday following a comment by New York Fed president John Williams that policymakers should take action on monetary policy before disaster strikes, raising expectations of a rate cut at month's end.
The Shanghai Composite Index jumped 1%, erasing the losses it had seen over the course of the week while China's blue chip CSI300 Index rose 1.3%.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index added 1.1% while Japan's Nikkei Index jumped 1.9% and South Korea's Kospi Index climbed 1.2%.
The prospect of growing military action in the Middle East sent oil prices soaring on Friday. It was reported that the US Navy had shot down an Iranian drone in the Strait of Hormuz, escalating tensions between the two nations.
US crude climbed 79 cents to US$56.09 a barrel while Brent crude jumped US$1.14 to US$63.07 a barrel.
In currencies, the ringgit was 0.1% higher against the greenback at 4.1095. It fell 0.4% against the pound sterling at 5.1529 and 0.1% against the Singapore dollar at 3.0283.
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