KUALA LUMPUR (May 12): Bursa Malaysia opened mixed in early trade on Thursday (May 12), buoyed by renewed positive sentiment with upside bias towards banking stocks despite the weaker performance on Wall Street overnight, a dealer said.

At 9.15am, the benchmark FBM KLCI had risen 1.74 points to 1,557.67 from Wednesday’s close at 1,555.93.

The index opened 1.01 points higher at 1,556.94, but retreated thereafter and recovered after nine minutes into trading.

On the broader market, losers surpassed gainers 246 to 161, while 239 counters were unchanged, 1,596 untraded and 19 others suspended.

Total turnover stood at 264.9 million shares worth RM134.4 million.

Rakuten Trade Sdn Bhd vice-president of equity research Thong Pak Leng said the KLCI may face some headwinds on Thursday amid heightened regional market volatility mirroring the weakness in US equities overnight.

“Therefore, we expect the index to trend within the 1,545-1,560 range on Thursday as we believe the impact of the latest Bank Negara Malaysia announcement to increase the overnight policy rate by 25 basis points may be positive for banks," he said.

Among the heavyweights, Malayan Banking Bhd (Maybank) added six sen to RM9.16, Public Bank Bhd was two sen higher at RM4.67, Petronas Chemicals Group Bhd and IHH Healthcare Bhd gained five sen to RM9.94 and RM6.47 respectively, while CIMB Group Holdings Bhd inched up one sen to RM5.11.

Of the actives, CSH Alliance Bhd and MYEG Services Bhd inched down half a sen to 12 sen and 88 sen respectively, Serba Dinamik Holdings Bhd recovered 1.5 sen to 7.5 sen and PUC Bhd added half a sen to 5.5 sen.

On the index board, the FBM Emas Index decreased 4.97 points to 11,107.37, FBMT 100 Index erased 4.36 points to 10,781.57, FBM Emas Shariah Index was 23.14 points lower at 11,491.98, FBM ACE shed 19.98 points to 5,340.16 and FBM 70 dipped 72.30 points to 13,182.27.

Sector-wise, the Financial Services Index improved 55.30 points to 16,821.42, the Industrial Products and Services Index was 0.45 of a point lower at 196.93, and the Plantation Index gave up 44.21 points to 8,189.81.