KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia's stock benchmark pushed higher on Thursday, continuing an uptrend that started this week as investors picked up stocks amid the year-end window-dressing period.
"In the absence of any aggressive selling from foreign funds, we expect the
index to possibly hover within the 1,615-1,625 range today, with the hope that the 1,630 mark will be broken along the way to avert a prolonged consolidation phase," said Rakuten Trade in its daily outlook.
There has also been a lift from Wall Street with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq scaling higher to fresh record closes.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.69% to 45,014.44, the S&P 500 gained 0.60% to 6,086.47 and the Nasdaq Composite gained 1.3% to 19,735.12.
Rakuten Trade said investors are awaiting the latest US employment data to be released this Friday, which may dictate the Federal Reserve's stance on interest rates.
At the start of trading, the FBM KLCI was up 2.05 points to 1,616.14 as it inched closer to the overhead 100-day simple moving average.
PETRONAS Gas led the gains, rising 18 sen to RM18.04 while Tenaga Nasional rose six sen to RM13.70.
CIMB inched up three sen to RM3.59 and QL Resources added four sen to RM4.87.
Meanwhile, of leading actives, Cropmate made its debut on the ACE Market with a 2.5 sen jump to 22.5 sen, while Solution gained 0.5 sen to 17.5 sen and Mestron dropped 0.5 sne to 30 sen.
