KUALA LUMPUR: The FBM KLCI extended its gains and ended Thursday positive, underpinned by Petronas stocks as oil and gas stocks continued to remain in the limelight.
At 5pm, the KLCI closed up 11.66 points to 1,781.75. Turnover was 2.57 billion shares valued at RM2.86bil. There were 664 gainers, 253 decliners and 288 counters unchanged.
Reuters reported that the European Central Bank is poised to announce a plan on Thursday to buy government bonds, resorting to its last big policy tool for breathing life into the flagging euro zone economy and fending off deflation.
Market expectations are sky-high for the ECB to unveil a large-scale program of quantitative easing (QE) - printing money to purchase the sovereign bonds - despite opposition from Germany's Bundesbank and concerns in Berlin that this could allow spendthrift countries to slacken their economic reforms.
At Bursa Malaysia, PetGas rose 66 sen to RM22.10 and PetChem 18 sen to RM5.29.
BAT rose 40 sen to RM66.90, Nestle 38 sen to RM71.08 and Amway 28 sen to RM10.90.
Gtronic rose 20 sen to RM5.01 and MPI 32 sen to RM5.50.
Decliners were CIMB, down 22 sen to RM5.65 and IWCity 14 sen to RM1.40.
PPB Group fell 40 sen to RM14.80.
Nikkei 225 rose 0.28% to 17,329.02
Hong Kong Hang Seng Index rose 0.7% to 24,522.63
Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index rose 0.59% to 3,343.34
Taiwan Stock Exchange Weighted Index rose 0.53% to 9,369.51
Korea Stock Exchange KOSPI Index fell 0.02% to 1,920.82
Straits Times Index STI rose 0.5% to 3,371.24
Crude oil fell 53 cents to US$47.25 and Brent 36 cents to US$48.67
Spot gold fell US$4.02 to US$1,289.07
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