KUALA LUMPUR: Hwang DBS Vickers Research said after a spectacular run over the past three weeks ? defying expectations of an intermittent market pullback along the way ? the benchmark FBM KLCI could well extend its gains on Thursday, Sept 2 even though market breadth may still come in broadly mixed.

HDBSVR said giving a lift to investors sentiment, in Malaysia as well as across Asia, is the overnight surge on Wall Street. Major U.S. bellwethers jumped between 2.5% and 3.0% following encouraging manufacturing data, which implies that the U.S. economic fundamentals might not be as bad as initially feared.

In its market outlook report, it said this suggested that the FBM KLCI will probably climb to test its immediate resistance threshold of 1,435 sooner than anticipated.

Meanwhile, economic news on tap on Thursday include:
(a) the outcome of Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM)?s monetary policy committee meeting, with the policymakers likely to stand pat after raising the overnight policy rate thrice (by a total of 0.75%); and
(b) external trade statistics for July, which is expected to show an annual increase of 11.7% in exports and 17.1% in imports (translating to a monthly trade surplus of RM6.4b), according to one media poll.