KUALA LUMPUR, July 20 — Once upon a time, the oil and gas stocks are the most hotly sought after stocks among investors due to its demand stability.
However, Covid-19 pandemic changed everything.
While global equities are facing a meltdown, the “use-and-throw” commodity; gloves, that was once only eyed by institutional investors as well as those banking on healthcare stocks are soaring high.
Today, Malaysia’s glove makers are dominating global investors’ attention, shifting the landscape entirely.
On the MSCI Asia Pacific Index, which captures large and medium capital representation across five developed market countries and nine emerging market countries in the APEC region; Malaysia’s glove players especially TopGlove and Supermax are dominating the game, leaving behind the US tech giant, Tesla.
According to Bloomberg, on year-to-date performance, Top Glove is up 389 per cent, the most on the MSCI Asia Pacific Index, while another local glove giant, Supermax Corp leapt more than 1,000 per cent.
This is despite the United States’ Customs and Border Protection (US CBP) imposing a detention order on imports from two of Top Glove’s subsidiaries, Top Glove Sdn Bhd and TG Medical Sdn Bhd, placing both the companies on its Withhold Release Order (WRO) list.
On Bursa Malaysia main index, the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI, only the two glove counters TopGlove and Hartalega have recorded steady gains despite the downtrend experienced on other stocks, especially oil and gas-related due to the fear of the second wave of COVID-19 as well as the ongoing trade tensions between Beijing and Washington.
As at 10am, the benchmark Brent Crude was at RM182.82 (US$42.85 per barrel, down 0.67 per cent from the previous closing price.
Top Glove, meanwhile, was up RM1.14 to RM24.12 with 9.02 million shares traded, Supermax was 98 sen higher to RM18.68 with 22.54 million shares traded, while Hartalega and Kossan was 58 sen higher to RM17.68 and RM14.08 with 3.84 million shares and 3.39 million shares traded respectively.
Besides the ordinary shares, all the shares’ call warrants also saw strong demand, marking all the listed calls to dominate the top gainers’ category.
— Bernama
