KUALA LUMPUR (June 19): Malayan Banking Bhd (Maybank) rose as much as 1.62% in today’s morning trade session. At 10.58am, Maybank rose 15 sen to RM9.39, making it the third largest gainer across Bursa today. The stock saw some 4.42 million shares exchanging hands.

The significant rise in share price occurred although there has not been any news. However, Interpacific Sdn Bhd senior dealer Sam Ng said that Maybank’s rise could be due to the Employee’s Provident Fund (EPF) heavily increasing its stake in the stock.

“The only thing that I can see is that EPF is buying. EPF may be more confident on this stock, and is buying very heavily. That could be one of the reasons why this stock is going up,” he said.

Over a span of one week, Maybank (fundamental: 1.5; valuation: 1.45) announced that the fund manager had acquired a total of about 13.84 million shares between June 8 and June 15, 2015.

However, the transaction prices were not disclosed in the filings.

(Note: The Edge Research's fundamental score reflects a company’s profitability and balance sheet strength, calculated based on historical numbers. The valuation score determines if a stock is attractively valued or not, also based on historical numbers. A score of 3 suggests strong fundamentals and attractive valuations.)