KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia continued to see gains in Friday morning trade even as China's markets remained under pressure from the prospect of further US tariffs announcements.
At 12.30pm, the FBM KLCI rose 12.69 points to 1,716.26. Trading volume was 1.99 billion shares with a value of RM1.35bil. There were 508 advancers to 267 decliners an 372 counters unchanged.
Malaysian banks continued their ascent in early trade to lead the local benchmark index higher. Maybank added five sen to RM9.55 while CIMB gained nine sen to RM5.72. Hong Leong put on 14 sen to RM18.60 and Public Bank was unchanged at RM23.
Other stocks seeing increases in the morning session included Axiata, lifting nine sen to RM4.15, Genting climbing eight sen to RM8.60 and Tenaga Nasional, rising 10 sen to RM14.58.
IHH Healthcare was in the spotlight as it was announced that it had won the bid for a 31.1% stake in India's Fortis Healthcare for RM2.35bil.
Trading in the healthcare provider's shares was halted from 9.22am and will re-open after the midday break at 2.30pm. The counter was last traded down two sen to RM5.95.
Apart from IHH, only one other stock on the KLCI was in the red: KLCC Property REIT lost three sen to RM7.67.
On the broader market, George Kent continued to rise following news that the Light Rail Transit 3 project was set to proceed despite cost cuts. The counter rose 13 sen to RM1.42.
MRCB, which also surged on the news yesterday, saw some profit-taking, losing three sen to 71 sen.
Meanwhile, Gabungan AQRS rose five sen to RM1.28 on a jump in Q2 earnings announced yesterday.
Meanwhile, oil markets declined on rising production by Opec and Russia despite a warning by the International Energy Agency that spare capcity may be stretched.
WTI crude slipped seven cents to US$70.40 a barrel while Brent crude dropped 17 cents to US$74.28 a barrel.
In currencies, the ringgit was little changed agains the greenback at 4.0390. It strenghtened 0.35% against the pound sterling at 5.3200 and moved up 0.16% against the Singapore dollar at 2.9614.
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