KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia bounced higher on Monday to offer some optimism for October following a dismal performance in the previous month.

       At 9.30am, the FBM KLCI was up 6.53 points to 1,531.01, bucking the negative trend on the market. Market breadth also turned positive after five negative days, with 407 gainers outpacing 199 decliners.

       "After suffering losses in September- which saw the FBM KLCI dropping 4% - investors will be hoping for a reversal of fortunes as we enter the last quarter of 2021.

       "Statistically, the market bellwether had registered positive monthly returns for October in seven of the last 10 years (notwithstanding the index ended in the red last October). This translates to an average monthly return of +1% since 2011," said Kenanga Research in its weekly technical note.

       The research house noted that from a charting standpoint the FBM KLCI could still be facing a bit more downside risk given the ongoing selling pressure and fresh negative technical signals.

       "The FBMKLCI could slide towards our immediate support threshold of 1,510. On the upside, any intermittent rebound in the bellwether is expected to be capped at our first resistance line of 1,550," it said.

       Over the coming week, the news flow is expected to be quiet with the calendar of event showing just the Opec ministerial meeting to be held today.

       However, Kenanga added that there may be interest in the new daily local Covid-19 cases, which have been trending lower, as Malaysia prepares to enter into the endemic phase sometime this month.

       On the blue-chip FBM KLCI, MISC was seen bouncing 18 sen higher to RM7.01 to lead the index's gains.

       Other early gainers included Tenaga Nasional up six sen to RM9.66, Maxis rising four sen to RM4.58 and PPB adding eight sen to RM18.38.

       CTOS was the most actively traded counters after sliding 10 sen to RM1.82 on strong selling pressure with 34.56 million shares done within the first 30 minutes of trade.

       The credit reporting agency came under the spotlight following Bank Negara's announcement that access to the central credit reference system (CCRIS) would be suspended due to a data leak.

       Other top active movers included Axteria up 1.5 sen to 25.5 sen and KNM rising 0.5 sen to 22 sen.