KUALA LUMPUR: Shares on Bursa Malaysia ended mixed today, recouping earlier losses on mild buying interest in selected finance and plantation counters, dealers said.
At 5 pm, the benchmark FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI settled at 1,848.66, up 2.80 points, after fluctuating between 1,841.10 and 1,848.97.
Syarikat Takaful Malaysia was among the top gainers as the market closed, adding 22 sen to RM14.82 while United Plantations rose 20 sen to RM26.60.
Meanwhile, a dealer said that most of the regional stock markets were in the red, dampened by China’s central bank’s move to reduce its reserve requirement.
The world’s second largest economy had on Sunday cut the amount of cash that banks in China must hold as reserves, the second industry-wide cut in two months.
On the broader market, losers overwhelmed gainers by 485 to 346, with 313 counters unchanged, 665 counters untraded and 20 others suspended.
Total volume on Bursa today stood at 3.13 billion shares worth RM2.14 billion, up from Friday’s 2.58 billion shares worth RM2.28 billion. The FBM Emas Index was 11.51 points higher at 12,735.77, the FBMT100 Index advanced 12.80 points to 12,401.20 and the FBM Emas Shariah Index gained 24.80 points to 13,289.16.
The FBM 70 meanwhile edged down 9.01 points to 13,727.16, and the FBM Ace improved 29.95 points to 7,331.03.
On a sectoral basis, the Finance Index added 49.35 points to 16,397.25, the Plantation Index trimmed 18.72 points to 7,717.75 while the Industrial Index went up 9.26 points to 3,415.24.
Among actives, Frontken and Bioalpha advanced three sen each to 28.5 sen and 41.5 sen respectively, Nova MSC added 4.5 sen to 41.5 sen, while RGB International was 2.5 sen higher at 23 sen.
Of the heavyweights, Maybank and Axiata eased one sen each to RM9.48 and RM7.01 respectively, TNB perked eight sen to RM14.53 and Public Bank went up 14 sen to RM19.60.
Main Market volume expanded to 1.71 billion units worth RM1.79 billion from Friday's 1.63 billion units worth RM2.02 billion.
Turnover on the ACE Market rose to 1.36 billion shares valued at RM341.45 million compared with 898.78 million shares valued at RM253.46 million previously.
Warrants increased to 55.87 million units worth RM10.79 million from 46.91 million units worth RM8.30 million previously.
Consumer products accounted for 152.77 million shares traded on the Main Market, industrial products (294.46 million), construction (167.17 million), trade and services (754.74 million), technology (131.68 million), infrastructure (13.21 million), SPAC (7.02 million), finance (58.28 million), hotels (1.22 million), properties (107.13 million), plantations (16.37 million), mining (6,000), REITs (5.05 million) and closed/fund (6,000). -- BERNAMA