At 12.30pm, the key index was up 7.56 points to 1,615.99.
There was strong buying interest in glove shares on expectations of robust earnings results for the previous financial quarter.
Top Glove rose 11 sen to RM5.84, Hartalega
climbed 40 sen to RM11.18 and Supermax gained 30 sen to RM6.25.There was also positive price action in financial counters, led by Maybank up five sen to RM8.31, Public Bank gaining two sen to RM4.19 and Hong Leong Bank climbing 22 sen to RM18.12. CIMB was down five sen to RM4.14.
Plantation player Sime Darby Plantation
was also seen rising 11 sen to RM4.52 while consumer giant Nestle put on RM1 to RM136.Transocean's meteoric rally continued, jumping RM1 to hit the day's upper limit at RM4.34.
Other leading gainers were TGL rising 43 sne to RM1.89 and MPI advancing 42 sen to RM39.98.
Among actives, Minda rose two sen to 19 sen, Focus added 2.5 sen to 15 sen and AT Systemization
gained 0.5 sen to 10.5 sen.In Asia, a China-led equities rally took markets to three-week highs on the back of expectations of a robust economic recovery.
China's composite index rose 0.2% while Hong Kong's Hang was flat.
Japan's Nikkei gained 0.6%, South Korea's Kospi rose 0.7% and Australia's ASX200 was unchanged.