KUALA LUMPUR: Investors on Bursa Malaysia continued to position themselves for the tabling of Budget 2024 on Friday amid a global market rally as recent comments from US Federal Reserve officials suggested fears of another rate hike were overdone.
At 12.30pm, the benchmark FBM KLCI was up 9.05 points to 1,445.54 while the overall market was positive with 443 gainers compared to 320 decliners.
There were 1.92 billion shares valued at RM909.24mil.
Blue-chip counters were mostly up with all but four stocks in positive territory.
Banks led the rally as Maybank rose seven sen to RM8.97, Public Bank gained four sen to RM4.19, CIMB added five sen to RM5.65 and Hong Leong Bank gained eight sen to RM19.48.
CelcomDigi climbed nine sen to RM4.38 and Tenaga Nasional rose nine sen to RM10.08.
Among actives, Classita was down 0.5 sen to seven sen, MMAG rose 0.5 sen to 1.5 sen and SSF was up 1.5 sen to 26.5 sen.
Key Asian markets rose strongly led by gains in Hong Kong's Hang Seng, which was up 1.9% to 18,231.
China's composite index gained 0.8% to 3,104 while Japan's Nikkei climbed 1.6% to 32,459.
South Korea's Kospi rose 1% to 2,474.
