Blue chips marginally higher

KUALA LUMPUR: Blue chips eked out marginal gains in early trade on Friday, March 26 while the overall market breadth was positive, with mild buying interest seen only in smaller capitalised stocks and lower liners.

At 9.43am, the FBM KLCI was up 1.18 points to 1,313.66. Turnover was 210.32 million shares valued at RM208.14 million. There were 223 gainers, 133 losers and 181 stocks unchanged.

Hwang DBS Vickers Research said a deeper look into the performance of Wall Street last night revealed that major U.S. equity indices jumped as much as 1.1% to 1.4% initially.

However, they ended virtually unchanged (between flat and -0.2%) at the closing bell as investors unwound their positions amidst concerns over sovereign debt problem faced by Greece in particular.

“Still, we expect the benchmark FBM KLCI on the Malaysian stock exchange to show resilience ahead, probably oscillating with a marginal positive bias today. The immediate support and resistance levels currently stand at 1,305 and 1,340, respectively,” it said.

Hwang DBS Vickers Research said as efforts to consolidate the water services industry in Selangor see more twists and turns following the entry of SPLASH to buy over all the water assets, share prices of related companies like Gamuda and Puncak Niaga may attract continuous trading interest for now.

Timber-based Jaya Tiasa rose the most, adding 20 sen to RM3.70 while Hai-O added 15 sen to RM4.54 and Proton 14 sen to RM4.41. KPJ advanced 12 sen to RM3.

Hock Heng Stone Industries, which was listed on the Main Market, rose 6.5 sen to 61.5 sen and it was the most active with 21.9 million shares done.

MPHB, which rallied to a more than two-year high on Thursday, eased one sen to RM2.23 while the call warrants shed 0.5 sen to 33 sen in active trade.

KNM continued to lose ground, shedding two sen to 70.5 sen with 17.9 million shares done.

The decliners were TSR Cap, down n ine sen to Rm1.01 with 41,000 shares done, Measta gave up five sen to RM3.18 as investors locked in gains while Telekom fell three sen to RM3.45.

Public Bank shed four sen to RM11.60, its call warrants Publoic Bank-CJ lost three sen to RM1 while AMMB shed three sen to RM4.94.