KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia is likely to trend higher on the back of better sentiment brought by the strong performance of Wall Street, which had a spillover effect on its Asian counterparts.
Affin Hwang Investment Bank vice president/head of Retail Research, Datuk Dr Nazri Khan Adam Khan, said other than the US reaching record highs, the European Central Bank is also set to liquidate the market with a quantative easing bond buying programme for 2017.
“To add to the positivity around this time of the year, markets will commonly go through a bullish cycle, thus elevating the ringgit and crude oil prices.
“The market will then likely test the 1,650-point level,” he told Bernama.
On a week-to-week basis, the benchmark FBM KLCI rose 12.46 points to 1,641.42 from 1,628.96 last Friday, the FBM Emas Index gained 74.72 points to 11,473.84, the FBMT 100 Index was up 78.55 points to 11,209.58 and the FBM Emas Shariah Index was 86.93 points higher at 12,013.07.
The FBM Ace declined 72.14 points to 4,706.43 but the FBM 70 advanced 68.32 points to 13,144.72.
On a sectoral basis, the Finance Index rose 64.16 points to 14,352.43, the Industrial Index was up 41.66 points to 3,105.2 and the Plantation Index edged up 9.03 points to 7,727.27.
Weekly turnover decreased to 5.59 billion units worth RM7.25 billion from 7.40 billion units worth RM9.44 billion registered last Friday.
Main market volume declined to 3.63 billion shares valued at RM6.92 billion from 5.10 billion shares valued at RM9.09 billion last week.
Warrant turnover slipped to 1.1 billion units valued at RM211.57 million from 1.24 billion units valued at RM210.91 million last week.
The ACE market was down to 827.3 million shares worth RM109.01 million from 1.04 billion shares worth RM141.05 million last week. — Bernama