KUALA LUMPUR: A strong rally in oil prices spurred buying interest in Malaysian equities even as the prospect of higher energy costs worked against the efforts of central banks to rein in global inflation.
At 12.30pm, Bursa Malaysia’s benchmark FBM KLCI was up 4.84 points to 1,427.43.
There were 524 gainers compared with 265 decliners. Trading volume was 2.19 billion shares valued at RM774.47mil.
Brent crude prices surged over 5% to above US$84 a barrel at midday as Opec+ oil producers announced a surprise round of production cuts.
The Bursa Malaysia Energy index rose 3.4% to 865.21 on the news with oil and gas stocks seeing strong buying interest.
Bumi Armada rose 3.5 sen to 66.5 sen, Hibiscus Petroleum climbed eight sne to RM1.07, Dayang gained six sen to RM1.40 and Petron Malaysia added nine sen to RM4.50.
Bursa Malaysia’s blue chips were also lifted with the strongest gainer being PETRONAS Chemicals, rising 16 sen to RM7.23.
Rising bank counters included Maybank up two sen to RM8.59, Public Bank adding one sen to RM4.01 and RHB adding three sen to RM5.61.
Leading actives were Vinvest up 0.5 sen to 20.5 sen, Zentech gaining 0.5 sen to 2.5 sen and MMAG unchanged at two sen.
Meanwhile, key Asian markets tracked the positive performance on Wall Street as the latest US inflation data showed a smaller increase than expected.
Japan’s Nikkei rose 0.5% to 28,192, South Korea’s Kospi fell 0.2% to 2,472, and China’s composite index added 0.6 to 3,291.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was down 0.6% to 20,279 and Australia’s ASX200 was up 0.6% to 7,219. – The Star