KUALA LUMPUR (Nov 28): The FBM KLCI pared some of its losses at mid-morning today but remained in negative zone, weighed down by losses including at Tenaga Nasional Bhd and select blue chips, in line with tentative regional markets.
At 10am, the FBM KLCI was down 2.13 points to 1,682.84. The index had earlier dipped to a low of 1,678.48.
Gainers led losers by 258 to 187, while 245 counters traded unchanged. Volume was 387.16 million shares valued at RM322.36 million.
The top losers included Tenaga Nasional Bhd, KESM Industries Bhd, Dutch Lady Milk Industries Bhd, Kuala Lumpur Kepong Bhd, Panasonic Manufacturing Malaysia Bhd, RHB Bank Bhd, Enra Group Bhd and JMR Conglomeration Bhd.
The actives included Genting Malaysia Bhd, Sanichi Technology Bhd, Tatt Giap Group Bhd, Hibiscus Petroleum Bhd and Permaju Industries Bhd.
The gainers included Nestle (M) Bhd, United Plantations Bhd, British American Tobacco (M) Bhd, QL Resources Bhd, Allianz Malaysia Bhd, Supermax Corp Bhd, Hong Leong Bank Bhd and IHH Healthcare Bhd.
Asian shares dithered on Wednesday and the US dollar jumped to a near 1½-year top as risk assets rowed back amid conflicting signals on prospects for de-escalating the Sino-US trade dispute, according to Reuters.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was last flat with Australian stocks the biggest drag, it said.
Hong Leong IB Research in a traders' brief said in the US, the market volatility will remain over the near term ahead of the Trump-Xi trade discussion in the upcoming G20 summit.
"Also, few other major events such as OPEC (Dec 6) and FOMC (Dec 18-19) meetings will be monitored closely for further clues on the market direction moving forward.
"On the local front, we could expect mild bargain-hunting activities to emerge among bashed down stocks, tracking the positive rebound on Wall Street.
"However, the rebound [is] likely to be short lived as we are going through a subdued reporting season, as most of the corporate earnings are weaker than expected," the research house said.