Malaysian shares set to rise (BT)
MALAYSIAN shares are expected to rise today following strong gains in the US markets overnight after data showed a surprise surge in US housing starts in February.
“The regional markets are expected to remain solid today and Malaysia should be the same,” said a local brokerage dealer.
“Plantation stocks are also likely to support the market, as crude oil prices have jumped and that is likely to push palm oil prices higher as well,” he said. - Reuters
Wall Street Resumes Rally Following Housing Report (ABCNews)
A surprise government report that home construction picked up in February caught traders off guard and injected a week-old stock market rally with new energy Tuesday.
Stocks of homebuilders and banks jumped as bullish investors saw yet another sign that the deeply troubled economy was beginning to show signs of stabilizing.
Tuesday's rally, which picked up momentum as the day went on, wound up pushing the Dow Jones industrial average up 179 points, or 2.5 percent and the broader Standard & Poor's 500 index up more than 3 percent. It was the market's fifth gain over the past six trading days.
Tim Courtney, the chief investment officer at Burns Advisory Group, said the report was encouraging and could be part of an initial recovery in the housing market.
"We could be in the very early stages of some kind of normalization" in housing, he said. A housing recovery is widely seen as a key to helping end the recession.
Meanwhile, the Labor Department said wholesale prices rose 0.1 percent in February after rising 0.8 percent in January. Economists predicted the producer price index would rise 0.4 percent during the month. The government said core inflation, which excludes energy and food, edged up 0.2 percent in February after rising 0.4 percent in January
While investors wait for the Fed meeting to end, Peckham said individual company announcements can have a bigger impact on the market.
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