KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia defied the profit-taking pressure seen in regional markets by keeping to an upward trend over the course of the early session.
The index turned up the rally nearing midday as the country's 1Q gross domestic product report was due to be released.
At the lunch break, the FBM KLCI was up 6.03 points to 1,617.14, bolstered by an estimate-beating performance of 4.2% growth in the country's economy.
This represents the highest level the index has been trading at in 26 months.
The buying was not confined to the Exchange's blue chips, as investors bought up lower liners across sectors. The number of gainers on the market rose to 678 as compared to 373 decliners and 492 unchanged.
Amid the trading optimism, share turnover ratcheted up to 4.48 billion with a value of RM2.14bil.
YTL-related counters remained outperformers on the market with YTL Corp rising 17 sen to RM3.82 and YTL Power gaining 21 sen to RM5.39.
PETRONAS Chemicals climbed 11 sen to RM7.01 while PETRONAS Gas gained six sen to RM18.18 and PETRONAS Dagangan added 14 sen to RM21.02.
Meanwhile, DKSH jumped 22 sen to RM5.23 following its results announcement yesterday evening while MPI climbed RM2.48 to RM35.98 on its own positive report card.
Top actives were Ingenieur up 1.5 sne to nine sen, Revenue down one sen to 22 sen and Datasonic gaining six sen to 53.5 sen.
In regional markets, investors turned to profit-taking as they locked in some cash following the recent strong rally.
Japan's Nikkei fell 0.1% to 38,762, China's composite index slipped 0.1% to 3,119 and the Straits Times index fell 0.26% to 3,296..
Hong Kong's Hang Seng rose 0.29% to 19,433.
