KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia's rally is alive and well after better-than-expected earnings from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and major US banks helped to boost investor appetite for equities.
While Malaysia's FBM KLCI had already put on about 3% since the rally began last Friday, the index remains bullish with traders accumulating shares in banking heavyweights in anticipation of economic growth.
The index picked up 2.47 points to 1,17.63 at the opening bell, representing a fresh seven-year high.
Among the banking plays, Maybank rose six sen to RM11.16, RHB gained four sen to RM8.22 and AMMB added three sen to RM6.58. Consumer giant Nestle jumped RM1.50 to RM117.50.
The rally comes ahead of Malaysia advance estimate of economic growth for the fourth quarter of 2025, which is scheduled for release later today.
Additionally, TA Securities said in its commentary that cautious trading should prevail amid geopolitical uncertainties and an absence of domestic positive catalysts.
Rakuten Trade noted that the market is expecting a minor correction at current levels before it resumes with the uptrend.
"We believe foreign funds are continuing with their stock
accumulation as we noticed there were net foreign inflows over the previous few sessions," it said in a note.
In actively traded stocks, precision engineering components manufaturer Northeast Group topped the list on bargain-hunting activities
Rebounding from a sharp decline in share price this week, the counter jumped four sen to 63.5 sen with 19.27 million shares traded.
Other top actives included Velesto
up 0.5 sen to 28 sen and NexG down two sen to 29.5 sen.
