Jakarta stocks up at midday on arbitrage in Telkom
JAKARTA, Jan 21 (Reuters) - Jakarta stocks were sharply up at midday on Wednesday as players actively bought heavyweight Telkom (TLKM.JK) to benefit from differences between the local price and New York and London prices, brokers and analysts said.
The Jakarta composite index rose 19.89 points, or 4.44 percent, to 467.93 points by the lunch break on a total turn-over of 284 billion rupiah.
''Players, mostly through American brokerages, are buying Telkom here to benefit from the rupiah's fall,'' said telecommunications analyst Agung Prabowo of state-owned Danareksa Sekuritas.
Telkom, which has around a 17-percent weighting on the index, is also listed in New York (TLK - news) and London (quote from Yahoo! UK & Ireland: TLKMq.L).
It was 300 rupiah higher at 4,150 rupiah by midday in Jakarta after touching a high of 4,200 rupiah.
Heavyweight Indosat also made strong gains, rising 3,525 rupiah, or 23.23 percent, to 18,700 rupiah after touching a record high of 19,200 rupiah.
Analysts, however, said the rise in the composite index could be misleading as it was based largely on gains in Telkom and other stocks also listed in New York, including Indosat (ISAT.JK) (IIT - news).
Overall market sentiment was generally weak with losers outnumbering gainers by 45 to 38 of shares traded. |
