KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia ended higher on Tuesday, buoyed by buying support in index-linked counters, led by PETRONAS Chemicals, Public Bank, and Maybank.
The FBM KLCI settled the day up 7.48 points, or 0.45% to 1,656.39 points. This was on a volume of 2.55 billion shares valued at RM2.4bil.
Daily losers on Bursa Malaysia at 672 counters outweighed the gainers at 379 counters, while 475 remained unchanged.
Stock market data showed foreign funds were net sellers at RM251mil but local institutions were net buyers at RM218mil and retail investors at RM33mil on Monday.
Top gainers on Bursa Malaysia included Malaysian Pacific Industries
, which rose 60 sen to RM27.20, Nestle, which added 60 sen to RM104.60 and Kuala Lumpur Kepong, which gained 46 sen to RM21.
Hong Leong Bank slid 18 sen to RM21.38, KLCC fell 17 sen to RM7.83, Gamuda lost 16 sen to RM7.92 and ITMAX declined 10 sen to RM3.51.
Among the actives, DNeX gained four sen to 37.5 sen with 126.77 million shares traded while Capital A fell one sen to 98 sen with 53.2 million shares done.
On the forex market, the ringgit fell from a 3.5-year high reached on Monday and was last trading at 4.1720 against the US dollar, down 1.18%.
The local currency has depreciated by 0.66% against the pound sterling, now at 5.5600, and by 0.65% against the Singapore dollar at 3.2404.
Around the region, MSCI's Asia ex-Japan stock index was weaker by 0.28%.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 ended up 1.93% at 38,651.97. Taiwan’s Taiex added 0.75% to 22,390.39 and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 index slipped 0.7% to 8208.9 points.
Markets in China, South Korea and Hong Kong were closed due to public holidays.
