KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia will likely trend higher next week fuelled by a fresh wave of bullishness in global equity markets coupled with window dressing activities.
"Investors are expected to put aside recent uncertainties over the pace of global growth and the Federal Reserve’s intentions to end its asset purchase programme.
"We note that global equity markets including Bursa Malaysia closed October strongly, after recovering from a nine-week poor performance, with the FBMKLCI finding support near the 1,760-point level, after dropping 130 points," AffinHwang Investment Bank vice-president and head of retail research, Datuk Dr Nazri Khan Adam Khan, told Bernama.
He said end of year rotation and window dressing would also likely push equities higher as mutual funds start selling losers and buying winners, ahead of the traditionally bullish November-December-January festive seasons.
On the technical front, Nazri said while there is a potential for a short-term dip in the market to rebalance overbought technical conditions, the prevailing trend points up with the immediate target at the 1,850 and 1,880 points level.
"One way to look for signs of market stress is to look at breadth figures which so far remain positive suggesting more stocks participating in the rally.
"Given the improved market breadth of an average daily trade increase to 1.8 billion shares worth RM1.9 billion, we expect the local market to sustain gains going forward," he added.
For the week just ended, the FBM KLCI rose 36.29 points to end at 1,855.15 from last week's 1,818.86.
The Finance Index advanced 153.62 points to 16,826.53, the Industrial Index added 73.4 points to 3,279.4 and the Plantation Index rose 409.87 points to 8,553.85.
The FBM Emas Index was 243.85 points higher at 12,882.78, the FBMT100 Index improved 232.23 points to 12,517.22 and the FBM Emas Syariah Index was 323.44 points higher at 13,346.37.
The FBM 70 gained 214.32 points to 14,133.01 and the FBM Ace increased 282.73 points to close the week at 6,586.03.
The weekly turnover soared to 10.51 billion shares worth RM10.31 billion from 6.76 billion shares worth RM7.37 billion last week.
Main market volume increased to 7.56 billion units valued at RM9.56 billion from 5.13 billion units valued at RM5.13 billion registered previously.
Warrant turnover rose to 341.51 million units worth RM41.51 million from 318.71 million units worth RM30.7 million transacted last week.
The ACE market volume improved to 2.57 billion units valued at RM694.13 million from 1.29 billion units valued at RM319 million last Friday.-- Bernama