KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia sustained a rally over the morning session, tracking optimism in global markets as recent US employment data helped alleviate concerns over the health of the economy.
At 12.30pm, the Malaysian benchmark FBM KLCI was up 7.36 points to 1,693.9, as the rally in heavyweight banks continued wihle plantations surged.
Financial services stocks rose 0.61% with the country's leading banks among the top gainers. Maybank rose 10 sen to RM10.98, CIMB gained five sen to RM8.20 and Hong Leong Bank climbed 22 sen to RM23.28.
Plantation plays jumped 1.31%, with notable gainers such as Kuala Lumpur Kepong gaining eight sen to RM20.08, United Plantations rising 98 sen to RM34.30 and Sarawak Oil Palms
adding 14 sen to RM3.98.
The improvement in risk appetite lifted the overall market performance - charting 547 positive counters compared to 410 negative. Total trading volume was 1.9 billion shares valued at RM1.09bil.
On the regional scene, Japan's Nikkei picked up 1.61% to 51,939. China's CSI300 gained 0.44% to 4,779 and the Shanghai Composite index added 0.75% to 4,151.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng climbed 0.86% to 26,456.
As investors continue to accumulate stocks on the economic growth story, US futures pointed to profit-taking in the upcoming session on Wall Street as traders were unnerved by the criminal investigation of US Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell by the US government amid ongoing pressure from President Donald Trump for the central bank to lower interest rates.
At the time of writing, Dow and S&P500 futures were down 0.5% each while Nasdaq futures slipped 0.8%.
