Share prices on Bursa Malaysia are expected to maintain a bullish bias on positive global economic data, continuous carry
trades and plantation sector strength.

Affin Investment Bank Bhd vice-president and head of retail research, Dr Nazri Khan, said the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) should have more energy to carry the current rally higher, at least to end-January next year.

"This is given the extent of strong rally the last four months, which saw the benchmark index registering a whopping gain of 9.9 per cent over the September-December period," he told Bernama.

On the domestic front, Nazri said, Bursa Malaysia should get significant catalysts from a strong commodity bounce with crude palm oil, light crude oil, gold and copper making big short-covering rallies and plantation sector leading the rest of the broad market and gaining 1.4 per cent week-on-week.

Nazri said there were continuous evidence of positive carry trades with ringgit/yen maintaining a fresh five-month peak of 31.69, the highest since July 2013.

On a Friday-to-Friday basis, the FBM KLCI rose 11.23 points to 1,823.95 points, Finance Index advanced 83.18 points to 16,758.83 points, Industrial Index fell 56.46 points to 3,097.37 points and the Plantation Index surged 118.55 points to 8,998.60 points.

The FBM Emas Index increased 54.89 points to 12,626.93 points and FBMT100 Index soared 329.80 points to 12,632.13 points.

The FBM 70 erased 82.54 points to 14,098.71 points and the FBM Ace fell 39.21 points to 5,553.30 points.

Weekly total turnover fell to 5.97 billion shares worth RM8.47 billion from 7.85 billion shares worth RM9.46 billion last week.

Main market volume decreased to 4.26 billion units valued at RM8.09 billion from last week's 5.66 billion units valued at RM8.96 billion.

Warrants turnover contracted to 161.164 million shares worth RM19.84 million from 192.34 million shares, worth RM20.43 million last Friday.

The ACE market volume also slipped to 1.43 billion shares worth RM336.37 million from 1.59 billion shares, worth RM447.81 million previously.-- Bernama