News Room - Business/Economics

Posted on 25 Feb 2009

Asian markets up

Major East Asian indices were up in early morning trade Wednesday with the KLCI marginally up on Bank Negara’s announcement of a 50 basis points cut to 2% in the overnight policy rate.

 

According to HwangDBS Vickers Research Sdn Bhd, “a market rise without a positive change in fundamentals will unlikely to sustain over time.”

 

At 10am, the KLCI was up 0.1% to 894.99 on heavy trading of the shares of TM after it announced a capital repayment exercise amounting to 98 sen per share.

 

Meanwhile, Singapore’s Straits Times Index gained 0.76% % to 1,626.64.

 

Tokyo’s Nikkei gained 1.54% to 7,380.74, Shanghai’s A share index was down 0.16% to 2,197.18 while Seoul’s Kospi Index gained 1.25% to 1,077.15.

 

At Bursa Malaysia, 115 counters were up, 98 were down and 109 others were unchanged. There were 61.44 million shares traded with a total value of RM83.65 million.

 

Among active counters, TM were up 22 sen to RM3.56, while KNM gained 1.5 sen to 41.5 sen.

 

Maybank was down 10 sen to RM5.30.

 

According to Intertek, Malaysian palm oil exports rose 5% to 1 million tonnes from Feb 1-25 compared to 952,478 tonnes in the same period last month.

 

Crude palm oil closed at RM1,871 per tonne on Tuesday. Meanwhile, crude oil on electronic trade was down 5 cents to US$39.91 per barrel.

 

The ringgit was marginally up against the US dollar at 3.667.