KUALA LUMPUR: Blue chips eked out slim gains early Tuesday, with Tenaga Nasional’s rebound helping to lift the FBM KLCI despite the lacklustre mood in Asian markets.
At 9.09am, the KLCI was up 2.29 points or 0.14% to 1,679.93. Turnover was 148.34 million shares valued at RM42.19mil. There were 107 gainers, 96 losers and 198 counters unchanged.
Asian stocks saw a muted start to trading after their US counterparts slipped overnight. The yen held near a four-week low.
Stocks in Japan and South Korea clawed back some of Monday’s losses while Australian shares drifted. Earlier, US equities fell for a second day as investors took a cautious approach in a week full of central bank activity, Bloomberg reported.
At Bursa, Tenaga rose 10 sen to RM13.92 and Top Globe added four sen to RM4.84.
Carlsberg rose 24 sen to RM25.34, Homeritz
-WB jumped 8.5 sen to 17 sen, G3_WA added eight sen to RM1.59.
Yee Lee was up five sen to RM2.25 and Top Glove four sen to RM4.84.
Reuters reported oil fell on Tuesday amid worries over the outlook for demand after the latest signs that international trade disputes have been dragging on the global economy, although tensions in the Middle East offered some support to prices.
Brent crude futures were down 21 cents, or 0.3%, at US$63.90 a barrel by 0022 GMT. They fell 12 cents on Monday.
US West Texas Intermediate crude futures were down 20 cents, or 0.4%, at US$57.46 a barrel. They rose 15 cents in the previous session.
Barakah was the most active, up one sen to 6.5 sen.
Mestron gained 0.5 sen to 14.5 sen in active trade also after the steel pole manufacturer said it was teaming up with Platinum Core Solutions Sdn Bhd (PCS) to provide a centralised base band unit (BBU) system to mobile network operators.
London Biscuits tumbled six sen to 18 sen with 10.7 million share s done, Ideal lost three sen to RM1.37 and Ideal-WB was down two sen to 45.5 sen. Cypark and Khee San lost two sen each to RM1.53 and 33.5 sen.
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