KUALA LUMPUR: Investors will be keeping their eyes peeled for corporate results released this week even as the uncertainty over the US Federal Reserve’s stand on future interest rates threatens to spark volatility in global markets.
“Globally, investors may adopt a cautious stance as they await further clues on the direction of interest rates from the US FOMC meeting minutes scheduled for later this week,” said Apex Securities Research in a note.
Malacca Securities Research said investors will be on the lookout for opportunities from fundamentally solid companies.
“We noticed consumer stocks may perform well with the normalising costs throughout last year and increasing demand during the final quarter of 2023.
“Meanwhile, we believe the plantation sector could trend firmly higher with the momentum building up recently, in tandem with the FCPO prices. Besides, the technology sector may turn attractive with the ongoing bidding for NIISe 2.0 project,” it said in a review.
Overnight, Wall Street was closed for business due to the President’s Day public holiday, offering no fresh trading leads for Asian markets.
At the opening bell, the benchmark FBM KLCI was up a marginal 0.11 points to 1,538.72, which suggested the market was set for another session of range-bound trading.
The blue chips, however, have been eking higher in light of Wall Street’s bullish performance on the back of strong corporate results so far in the season.
Stocks taking an early lead included PETRONAS Gas up eight sen to RM18.18, Sime Darby rising five sen to RM2.56, YTL Power gaining two sen to RM3.82, and Telekom adding two sen to RM5.89.
Dialog, which recently announced its quarterly result, rose six sen to RM1.92.
Top actives included Hong Seng up 0.5 sen to 2.5 sen, Minetec dropping 0.5 sen to 16.5 sen and Bina Puri shedding 0.5 sen to 7.5 sen.