KUALA LUMPUR: Blue chips ended higher on Wednesday on some foreign fund buying of MISC, CIMB and selected plantations but the overall broader market was still cautious.
At 5pm, the KLCI was up 5.48 points or 0.31% to 1,770.61. Turnover was 1.8 billion shares valued at RM175bil. There were 362 gainers, 429 losers and 403 counters unchanged.
Stock market data showed foreign funds were net buyers at RM115.40mil while local institutions were net sellers at RM102.2mil and retail investors at RM13.2mil
Hong Kong shares rose for a third straight session on Wednesday, as investors continued to chase mainland financials and materials firms, Reuters reported.
The ringgit rose 0.01% to the US dollar at 4.2855 and gained 0.01% also to the pound sterling at 5.6691 and climbed 0.16% to 3.1255 against the Singapore dollar but fell 0.26% to 5.0765 against the euro.
At Bursa, MISC rose 24 sen to RM7.60 and nudged the KLCI up 1.82 points while Tenaga gained two sen to RM14.18. Genting Bhd
added nine sen to RM9.75 but Genting Malaysia fell four sen to RM6.06. IHH Healthcare rose five sen to RM5.96.
Oil retreated from this week's eight-week highs above $52 a barrel on Wednesday, following a bearish combination of rising US inventories, an outage at a major European refinery and increasing Opec production, Reuters reported. US light crude oil fell nine cents to US$49.07 and Brent shed three cents to US$51.75.
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