Rakuten Trade Sdn Bhd equity research vice-president Thong Pak Leng attributed the positive sentiment on plantations to the rise of the price of crude palm oil above RM4,000 per tonne.
“For today, we remain cautiously optimistic that accumulation on blue chips would persist, thus expect the index to hover within the 1,410-point to 1,420-point range,” he said.
Thong said that apart from plantations, telco-related stocks are also likely to gain investors’ interest.
“Hopefully, the re-emergence of foreign funds will lead to the return of retailers,” he added.
On the whole, Thong said, an expected rise in US interest rates this week is likely to keep investors on Bursa Malaysia on the sidelines.
The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) of the US Federal Reserve begins its two-day meeting tomorrow, and expectations are that it will announce another 25-basis-point (bps) increase in interest rates.
Back in Malaysia, the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) opened the week at 1,412.68 points, down marginally from 1,413.52 at Friday’s close.
However, it improved slightly to 1,413.30 points just five minutes into the trading day.
On the broader market, decliners edged past advancers 142 to 132. Another 271 counters remained unchanged, while 1,748 were not traded and 16 others were suspended.
The turnover stood at 203.29 million units worth RM58.93 million.
Among the heavyweights, Maybank added a sen to RM8.79, Tenaga Nasional rose four sen to RM9.15 and Petronas Chemicals gained three sen to RM6.53, while Public Bank was flat at RM3.98 and CIMB declined three sen to RM5.27.
Of the actives, Classita Holdings and AHB Holdings inched up half-a-sen each to 17 sen and 15 sen respectively, and Jentayu Sustainable expanded eight sen to RM1.07, while Kumpulan Jetson dropped two sen to 21.5 sen and Advance Synergy was down half-a-sen to 16.5 sen.
On the index board, the FBM Emas Index gained 3.03 points to 10,451.82, the FBMT 100 Index was 2.29 points better at 10,133.65, the FBM 70 Index perked up 19.44 points to 13,895.73 and the FBM Emas Shariah Index increased 8.31 points to 10,755.27, while the FBM ACE Index slid 4.37 points to 5,325.22.
Sector-wise, the energy index rose 1.65 points to 819.37 and the industrial products and services index improved 0.07 of-a-point to 162.93, while the financial services index eased 10.31 points to 15,718.19 and the plantation index weakened 2.59 points to 7,085.00.