KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia rose in early morning trade as it bounced higher after the previous session's losses.
According to Malacca Securities Research, the FBM KLCI saw broad-based selling ahead of Bank Negara's interest rate decision during the monetary policy committee meeting, with investors focused on banking stocks for the near term.
"Given the lacklustre trading and the increase in continuation of net foreign selling, we opine that the local bourse may see selling pressure interspersed with bargain hunting activities in undervalued stocks," it added.
At 9.05am, the FBM KLCI was up 7.15 points to 1,444.67. There were 155 gainers compared with 65 decliners.
Trading volume was 101.28 million shares valued at RM39.02mil.
Blue-chip counters were mostly higher with gains across sectors.
In financial services, Maybank added two sen to RM8.62, Public Bank gained two sen to RM4.41, CIMB rose one sen to RM5.04 and Hong Leong Bank remained untraded.
Commodities and plantation also rallied with Press Metal
jumping seven sen to RM4.69, Sime Darby Plantation adding eight sen to RM4.36 and IOI gaining one sen to RM3.82.
Meanwhile, Orgabio made its debut on the ACE Market five sen higher at 36 sen. The stock was the most actively traded with 45 million shares exchanging hands.
Other top actives were AHB up 0.5 sen to 13.5 sen and Metronic unchanged at 9.5 sen.
