CIMB, Public Bank lead gainers

Written by Joseph Chin
Wednesday, 14 October 2009 10:29

KUALA LUMPUR: Shares of CIMB and Public Bank notched some gains in early trade on Wednesday, Oct 14, pushing the FBM KLCI past the 1,240 level, in line with firmer key Asian markets despite the lacklustre Wall Street.

The broader market was firmer with rising interest seen in penny stocks and small cap stocks like Talam, Time, KNM and Dataprep.

At 10am, the FBM KLCI was up 6.79 points or 0.55% to1,240.3, off the early high of 1,242. Turnover was 256.6 million shares valued at RM245.37 million. There were 252 gainers, 118 losers and 157 stocks unchanged.

Commodities continued to advance against a weakening dollar, with light crude oil adding 68 centys to US$74.83 and spot gold jumped US$2.20 or 0.21% to 1,066.4.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index opened 0.5% higher at 21,566.36 while Shanghai's Composite Index rose 1.19% to 2,971.18 and Singapore's Straits Timed Index up 0.32% to 2,676.96 but Japan's Nikkei 225 eased 0.25% to 10,051.13.

HwangDBS Vickers Research said while the broad market performance has been quite flat - the benchmark FBM KLCI was stuck inside a tiny 2.6-point band yesterday - things may look a bit better for the second and third liners.

"Just like yesterday, there were more gainers (440) than losers (245) as trading activity increased to 940 million shares valued at RM1.0 billio. If the market breadth continues to be positive on sustained market volume, then our Malaysian bourse is likely to plot higher highs going forward," it said in a research note.

However, the research house said the FBM KLCI barometer, nevertheless, was expected to ding dong for the time being amidst the rotational plays.

Even over in the U.S., Wall Street was stagnant last night. Its key equity indices ended between minus 0.3% and flat pending fresh market stimulating news in the form of economic progress reports and corporate financial announcements.

Nestle was the top gainer, adding 42 sen to RM34.40 while Hai-O continued to advance, adding 13 sen to RM7.08 while PPB rose 10 sen to RM15.70. Among the banks, CIMB added 14 sen to RM12.30 and Public Bank 10 sen to RM10.58.

IJM gained 10 sen to RM4.84 and IJM-WB 10 sen also to RM1.38 as it is seen to be a major beneficiary in the recovering CONSTRUCTION [] sector.

SILK rose seven sen to 51.5 sen and it was the most active with 28.9 million shares done when it was uplifted from the PN17 today.

Talam was flat at 9.5 sen, KNM and Time rose 0.5 sen to 81 sen and 37 sen while Dataprep added 2.5 sen to 37.5 sen.

PLANTATION []-based Far East fell 14 sen to RM6.18 but with 1,000 shares done, food-based Apollo gave up six sen to RM3.02 and Coastal five sen to RM1.83.