Daily Commentaries 4th Dec 06

The KLCI closed marginally flat last Friday after hitting a high of 1081.30 on the back of sporadic profit-taking following 2 days of heavy gains. Volume remained robust at over 1.6bn shares. TM was in the news over the weekend with talks of it buying into Timedotcom, Khazanah, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse entering into a RM2bn re-insurance deal and the 1 year extension granted by FIC to DiGi to meet Telenor's strategic and its own Bumiputra shareholding requirements. Elsewhere, Ranhill has entered into a service contract to explore, develop and exploit oil and gas at a block in the Sulu sea while Kuwait Finance confirmed it is eyeing RHB Group. Shares of Utusan Group and NSTP, which were suspended ahead of a merger announcement today may see the deal being postponed after both companies were asked to return to the drawing board by the government. US markets were down Friday after reports showed the manufacturing sector contracted in November, fuelling concerns of a hard landing for the economy going into 2007. We remain cautiously optimistic on the market's performance today noting the upside bias led by corporate newsflows and the strengthening Ringgit. Support is still pegged at the 1,080 level with resistance at 1,100.