KUALA LUMPUR: At midday, the FBM KLCI reclaimed some lost ground from the previous session, rising 10.36 points to 1,793.06 points.
Turnover was 3.1 billion shares with a value of RM1.8bil. There were 454 advancers versus 239 decliners and 608 counters unchanged.
The strong performance seen in the local bourse was in tandem with record overnight gains on Wall Street and Asian markets' decade-highs on upbeat manufacturing surveys.
The Shanghai Composite index rose nearly one percent at midday while Hong Kong's Hang Seng cleared another third of a percent after breaching the 30,000-point level in the previous session.
Back home, the KLCI was brought higher by Petronas Chemicals, rising 10 sen to RM7.95 and Petronas Gas, gaining 40 sen to RM17.92. Petronas Dagangan also rose 16 sen to RM24.52.
Among the heavyweights, Genting rose 16 sen to RM9.47, Maybank added four sen to RM9.70 and Tenaga Nasional gained eight sen to RM15.30.
Counters that slipped back included IHH Healthcare, dropping one sen to RM5.89; Hong Leong Bank, dipping two sen to RM17; and IOI, slipping one sen to RM4.53.
On the wider market, DRB-Hicom continued to put on gains, rising 20 sen to RM2.46. Lotte Chemicals Titan added 16 sen to RM4.91 while Kim Loong gained 16 sen to RM4.50.
In the spotlight today, MCT rose 1.5 sen to 84.5 sen on yesterday's announcement that Ayala Land Inc was looking at a substantial stake purchase valued at 88 sen a share.
Among the decliners, refiner Hengyuan took another breather, dropping 26 sen to RM17.70 while Petron Malaysia
dropped 20 sen to RM13.70. Aeon Credit declined 18 sen to RM13.60 and Time dotCom fell 10 sen to RM9.
In commodities, oil prices were relatively stable on Wednesday, trading near 2015 highs, as Opec efforts to curb production continued to take effect. US light crude was up one cent to US$60.38 a barrel while Brent crude dipped five cents to US$66.52 a barrel.
Meanwhile, the ringgit slipped back against major currencies following gains in the previous session. It traded 0.15% weaker against the greenback at 4.0255, 0.48% weaker against the pound sterling at 5.4741 and 0.18% weaker against the Singapore dollar at 3.0275.
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