Friday 29 Mar 2024
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KUALA LUMPUR (Jan 29): Share prices of rubber glove manufacturers Top Glove Corp Bhd, Hartalega Holdings Bhd and Supermax Corp Bhd jumped in Bursa Malaysia morning trade today before paring gains on speculation retail investors were buying glove shares in an epic combat against short sellers following inspiration from the recent rally of US company GameStop Corp.

At 9.02am today, Top Glove had risen 64 sen to RM6.85, Hartalega added 60 sen to RM12.80, and Supermax was 19 sen higher at RM6.75.

Yesterday, news reports quoting users of the bursabets forum on Reddit reported that Malaysian retail investors were looking to buy stocks of medical glove makers to drive up their share prices and squeeze out short sellers, drawing inspiration from the recent rally of GameStop.

It was reported that Malaysian retail investors discussed buying up stocks of glove makers, and complained about share prices having dropped in recent months even as the firms' profits grew.

"We're gonna be fighting in our markets tomorrow (today),” Reuters quoted a user called '_Revenant_' who started the bursabets forum as saying.

At a glance today, social media chat groups have been formed to promote glove shares. These include two chat groups on Telegram known as "TOP Glove Investors Discussion!” and "Malaysia GLOVE Union”.

TOP Glove Investors Discussion! indicated that it has 27, 321 members, of whom 13,115 are online.

Malaysia GLOVE Union said it has 8,393 members, out of whom 4,224 are online.

"Every glove is united in this group! Join us if u haven’t,” Malaysia GLOVE Union said.

On Bursa today, glove shares’ price rise was seen having a major impact on the broader market after Malaysian markets were closed yesterday for the Thaipusam holiday.

Shortly after markets opened today, Top Glove and Hartalega's share prices had risen to their highest so far today at RM7.12 and RM13.42 respectively, while Supermax’s intraday high so far was at RM7.16.

Top Glove, Hartalega and Supermax are FBM KLCI constituents.

On the broader market, the 30-stock KLCI had risen 14.47 points to 1,595.09 at 9.01am before paring gains for a 0.33-point rise at 1,580.95 as at 9.46am.

Comments from Bursa and the Securities Commission Malaysia (SC) could not be immediately obtained as of the time of writing today for this report.

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