KUALA LUMPUR: Share prices on Bursa Malaysia closed marginally higher on Tuesday as Turkish lira stabilised after two days of intense selling that rippled through global markets.
At 5pm, the 30-stock FBM KLCI closed at 1,783.780, up 0.44 of a point, or 0.02% after a bout of selling in the morning trading session. The market traded within a range of 10.14 points between an intra-day high of 1,788.34 and a low of 1,778.20 during the session. The index opened 3.55 points lower at 1,779.79.
There were 520 stocks advancing against 374 stocks declining while 420 counters unchanged. Turnover was 2.31 billion shares valued at RM2.47bil.
Ringgit was quoted at 4.096, depreciating 0.06% at 5.30pm.
The Turkish lira firmed after the central bank pledged to provide liquidity and Finance Minister Berat Albayrak said he would hold a conference call with investors on Thursday. The lira stood at 6.54 against the dollar at 0749 GMT, up around 5% on the day, Reuters reported.
At Bursa Malaysia, the top gainer was British American Tobacco
, which rose 98 sen to RM35.76. Vitrox gained 32 sen to RM7.65, Dufu advanced 22 sen to RM1.95 and Apex Healthcare rose 20 sen to RM7.25.
The losers included Nestle, Petronas Dagangan and Ayer Holdings. Among the actively-traded stocks, Frontken added one sen to 75 sen with 72.57 million shares traded.
Maxis rose 13 sen to RM5.79, pushing the index up by 1.813 while Tenaga gained 10 sent to RM15.66 nudging the index higher by 1.013.
Among the banks, Maybank fell eight sen to RM9.80, CIMB shed four sen to RM5.85, Hong Leong Bank eased six sen to 19.04 while Public Bank rose two sen to RM24.40.
Elsewhere in the region, Japan’s Nikkei rose 2.28% to 22,356.08, its biggest gain since March after Turkish lira pares losses.
Reuters reported that Hong Kong stocks fell for a third straight session on Tuesday, after data showed further signs of cooling in China’s economy and as trade war worries lingered.
The Hang Seng index fell 0.7% to 27,752.93 points, while the China Enterprises Index lost 0.2% to 10,744.31 points. The blue-chip CSI300 index fell 0.5% to 3,372.91 points while the Shanghai Composite Index closed down 0.2% at 2,780.96 points.
South Korea’s Kospi closed up 10.46 points or 0.47% at 2,258.91.
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