KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia saw a broad-based advance on Wednesday morning as an optimistic start to the US corporate earnings season lent a lift to global markets.
Each of Wall Street's three major indices jumped more than 2% on Tuesday night as earnings reports from blue chips showed a positive earnings season was underway while better-than-expected earnings from Netflix drove FANG stocks higher.
At 12.30pm, the FBM KLCI was 3.54 points higher at 1,740.38. Trading volume was 1.07 billion shares valued at RM919.88mil. The number of gainers nearly doubled the decliners, 453 to 240, while 303 counters were unchanged.
Stocks on the 30-stock index were mostly higher although the counters showed modest gains.
Advancing stocks were led by Petronas Chemicals rising four sen to RM9.44.
Bank stocks were mixed, Maybank rising four sen to RM9.59 and CIMB unmoved at RM6.03. Hong Leong Bank dropped 32 sen to RM20.62 while Public Bank slid two sen to RM24.96.
Courting investor interest in morning trade, Nextgreen Global yesterday announced it had secured RM400mil in funding for its Green Technology Park projects. The stock slid one sen to 48.5 sen.
Also seeing active trade, Hibiscus rose four sen to RM1.20 while Nova MSC was unchanged at 16 sen.
BAT was the top gainer on Bursa Malaysia with a 46 sen increase to RM33.68. Carlsberg grew 42 sen to RM17.68 while Aeon Credit
lifted 18 sen to RM15.58.
Declining US inventories sent oil prices higher on Wednesday. West Texas Intermediate crude rose 11 cents to US$72.03 a barrel while Brent crude added four cents to US$81.45 a barrel.
In currencies, the ringgit was little changed against the US dollar at 4.1532. It strengthened 0.2% against the pound sterling at 5.4722 and dipped 0.1% against the Singapore dollar at 3.0210.
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