KUALA LUMPUR: The FBM KLCI bounced strongly on Monday as the market welcomed the latest sign of slowing inflation in the US, and looked forward to dovish comments by the Federal Reserve later this week.
The benchmark took a flying start and traded in a positive band of 1,616.35 to 1,625.55 over the early session.
Going into the lunch break, the index was up 11.88 points or 0.74% to 1,624.76.
The market was broadly higher with 552 gainers compared to 402 decliners, with 12 out of the 13 sectors rising.
Financial Services, construction, telcos, plantations, utilities and property stocks saw robust gains while healthcare was the only sector that dropped.
while trading volume was 2.35 billion shares changing hands for RM1.25bil.
Among the blue chips, Sunway rose 11 sen to RM4.36, Tenaga Nasional gained 16 sen to RM14.18 and Telekom Malaysia surged 13 sen to RM7.03.
YTL Power added five sen to RM4.77, Press Metal
added 12 sen to RM5.36 and SD Guthrie climbed seven sen to RM4.52.
Meanwhile, Nestle Malaysia slipped RM1.90 to RM114 as its recent disappointing earnings result continued to weigh.
Of actives, Velocity rose 1.5 sen to 7.5, Ekovest dropped one sen to 45.5 sen and OCR was flat at 9.5 sen.
In regional markets, Japan's Nikkei bounced 2.55% to 28,625 after a 2.5-week correction that took it off record highs.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng climbed 1.82% to 17,331 and Singapore's Straits Times index rallied 0.73% to 3,451.
China's composite index was nearly flat at 2,892.
