KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 18 — Bursa Malaysia ended the morning session higher, supported by buying in heavyweight stocks.
At 12.30pm, the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) improved 4.79 points to 1,467.24 from Friday’s close of 1,462.45.
CIMB, which perked 11 sen to RM5.94, pulled the composite index up by 1.92 points.
The barometer index opened 0.89 point lower at 1,461.56 and moved between 1,460.42 and 1,467.84 during the session.
In the broader market, decliners outpaced gainers 385 to 275, while 584 counters were unchanged, 1,076 untraded and 27 others suspended.
Turnover stood at 2.73 billion units valued at RM1.61 billion.
It was reported that Asian shares were traded mostly lower as the Bank of Japan began a two-day meeting and investors were looking for hints of a change to the central bank’s longstanding near-zero interest rate policy.
Among the heavyweights, Maybank and Petronas Chemicals went up one sen each to RM9.01 and RM7.16 respectively, Public Bank added three sen to RM4.34, CIMB increased 11 sen to RM5.94, and Tenaga Nasional rose two sen to RM9.97.
Of the actives, Top Glove advanced seven sen to 97 sen, Careplus edged up 8.5 sen to 43.5 sen, Critical Holdings put on 19.5 sen to 54.5 sen, Minetech improved half-a-sen at 12.5 sen, and Bina Puri was flat at 9.5 sen.
On the index board, the FBM Emas Index notched up 36.45 points to 10,872.33, the FBMT 100 Index added 36.42 points to 10,538.69, the FBM 70 Index was 58.56 points higher at 14,532.68, the FBM ACE Index shed 13.04 points to 5,167.63, and the FBM Emas Shariah Index rose 23.91 points to 10,993.66.
Sector-wise, the Industrial Products and Services Index trimmed 0.16 of-a-point to 172.31, the Financial Services Index lifted 84.66 points to 16,521.62, the Energy Index increased 0.92 of-a-point to 817.21, and the Plantation Index weakened 9.89 points to 7,036.68. — Bernama