Thursday 28 Mar 2024
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KUALA LUMPUR (Apr 7): The benchmark FBM KLCI closed 13.57 points or 0.74% higher to finish at 1,856.51 points at 5pm today, following a positive lead from Wall Street which rallied last night, pushed by heavyweights.

According to Bloomberg, Asian stocks today rose following a rally in US equities after comments by a Federal Reserve official fuelled optimism that policy makers in the country will hold interest rates lower longer.

It added that technology and consumer discretionary shares led gains in the region.

TA Securities’ technical analyst Steven Soo told theedgemarkets.com that apart from the support from blue chip stocks today, the KLCI has also been gaining from a strong performance by consumer stocks.

“I believe it’s because of consumer stocks that have led to the gain on the KLCI. Today we also have the heavyweights pushing the index, some of which were oil and gas based companies,” said Soo.

He added that sentiment on the local bourse is turning positive because optimism has risen on the back of a possible delay on an interest rate hike in the US.

However, he cautioned that the KLCI may be seeing profit taking coming into play soon and investors should remain cautious.

Conversely, Reuters said that Asian stocks took a positive lead from Wall Street while the US dollar held onto its gains after rebounding against the Euro and Yen on higher US Treasury yields.

It added that in the region, shares in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand have been seeing gains while Chinese stocks hit new seven-year high ahead of quarterly earnings season.

Across the region, Japan’s Nikkei gained 1.25% to 19,640.54 points today while South Korea’s KOSPI was up by 0.03% to 2,047.03 points. Meanwhile, Singapore’s Straits Times Index rose 0.36% to 3,465.32 points while the Hong Kong Hang Seng Index jumped 0.77% to 25,275.64 points.

Overall, the KLCI saw a total of 1.95 billion shares traded with a value of RM2.10 billion. Market breadth was mixed with 502 gainers against 354 decliners, while 327 counters remained unchanged.

Today’s top gainers included Petronas Dagangan Bhd, Syarikat Takaful Malaysia Bhd and MISC Bhd. Meanwhile, decliners included Tenaga Nasional Bhd warrants, UEM Sunrise Bhd warrants and Malaysian Pacific Industries Bhd.

The most actively traded stock today was Takaso Resources Bhd, with about 6.15 million shares changing hands.

The ringgit on the other hand rose 0.24% to 3.6403 against the greenback at press time. The currency was weaker against the Singapore dollar by 2.6811.

Meanwhile, Reuters also noted that crude oil took a dip, giving back some of the large gains the commodity made overnight when the market reassessed how quickly Iran might increase exports after a preliminary nuclear deal.

It added that Goldman Sachs said prices needed to remain low for months to achieve a slowdown in US output growth. The commodity dipped 1.57% today to US$57.21 per barrel.

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