KUALA LUMPUR (June 12): The FBM KLCI pared some of its losses at mid-morning today but remained lacklustre in line with the cautious regional markets.

At 10am, the FBM KLCI was down 4.37 points to 1,646.83. The index had earlier slipped to a low of 1,642.24.

Losers led gainers by 254 to 192, while 285 counters traded unchanged. Volume was 477.74 million shares valued at RM271.29 million.

The decliners included Carlsberg Brewery Malaysia Bhd, Bintulu Port Holdings Bhd, Heineken Malaysia Bhd, Tenaga Nasional Bhd, Ajinomoto (M) Bhd, Genting Plantations Bhd and SAM Engineering & Equipment (M) Bhd.

Newly listed precision tool manufacturer HPMT Holdings Bhd topped the actives list. The counter was trading at 53.5 sen, down 2.5 sen from its initial public offering price of 56 sen, with 39.27 million shares changing hands.

Other actives included Ekovest Bhd, Iskandar Waterfront City Bhd, SMTrack Bhd and Bahvest Resources Bhd.

The gainers included Chin Teck Plantations Bhd, Amway (M) Holdings Bhd, Fraser & Neave Holdings Bhd, Pentamaster Corp Bhd, Country Heights Holdings Bhd, Magni-Tech Industries Bhd and Apollo Food Holdings Bhd.

Asian share markets got off to a cautious start on Wednesday as the White House took a tough line on a trade deal with China, just as investors were bracing for the latest batch of economic data from the Asian giant, according to Reuters.

Figures on consumer and producer prices that are expected to confirm inflation remain subdued and no bar to further stimulus. Shanghai markets had rallied on Tuesday on news Beijing would allow local governments to use cash from special bonds to fund investment projects, it said.

Hong Leong IB Research said that in the US, Wall Street could trend sideways over the near term as US President Donald Trump commented that he would impose more tariffs on Chinese goods (which may lead to full blown trade war) if there is no progress in the trade discussions with China President Xi Jinping in the upcoming G20 meeting later this month.

"Hence, investors could be worried that the trade war could prolong and could hurt the global economy moving forward.

"Taking cues from Wall Street and the unresolved trade tensions between the US and China, we opine that the stocks on the local bourse may take a breather as some of the stocks have rebounded fairly [decently] over the past few days.

"Nevertheless, we believe some trading activities will be noticed amongst construction and e-government services stocks, while O&G (oil and gas) stocks may rebound higher as Brent crude oil prices managed to stabilise near the US$60 level," it said.