After a brief one-day consolidation on Tuesday, stock prices on Bursa Malaysia resumed their rally on Wednesday, with the FBM KLCI touching another new 2-year high.

The recent ability of the key index to convincingly stay above the psychologically important 1,300-point level is helping sustain confidence, especially among domestic investors.

On Wednesday, the FBM KLCI was in positive territory throughout the day, closing 10.3 points higher at 1,328.2. This more than compensated for Tuesday’s 6.3-point loss, giving the index a total gain of 44 points over the last four trading days, and reaching its highest level in two years.   

Market breadth was positive with advancing stocks beating declining ones by a 3-to-2 margin. Trading volume improved from 797 million shares to 935 million shares.

Actively traded stocks include KNM, Berjaya Corp, IOI Corp, Axis, MRCB and SAAG. Major gainers include PPB, BAT, KL Kepong, Batu Kawan and MPI. Losers include Supermax, Latexx and MAS.

Shares of hard disk drive component producer Dufu Technology surged 12.5% as investors started to appreciate its low peer valuations, particularly after its recent strong final results.

Plantation stocks, warrants and smaller capitalized stocks saw active buying interest on Wednesday, as investors rotated between sectors and looked towards laggards. The current rally had earlier been led banking and finance stocks. Plantation stocks gained amid higher price forecasts from industry analysts at a conference in Kuala Lumpur.

While sentiment for global equities has improved over the last two weeks, other regional bourses appear to be in consolidation mode on Wednesday, unlike the local bourse, and are awaiting fresh leads. Most regional bourses traded relatively flat, taking their cues from Wall Street.

Wall Street had closed relatively flat, despite large gains in financial stocks like Citigroup and AIG as sentiment was slightly dampened by a report showing a fall in US consumer confidence.