KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia stayed in positive territory for the duration of the morning session, lifted by improved sentiment over the impact of the trade war.
The rally in Asian stocks lost some steam, however, as Chinese and Hong Kong stocks slipped slightly into the red while Japan's Nikkei was flattish following a bullish previous session.
At 12.30pm, the FBM KLCI was up 5.03 points to 1,805.74. There were 1.07 billion shares traded worth RM834.74mil. Market breadth saw an even spread of advancers and decliners of 333 to 330 and 373 counters unchanged.
The top three leading counters on the index were Petronas Chemicals up eight sen to RM9.49, Maybank adding four sen to RM9.79 and Genting Malaysia rising eight sen to RM4.90.
Hong Leong Bank pushed higher by 18 sen to RM20.84 while CIMB edge one sen higher to RM6.13.
On the losing end, Axiata slid two sen to RM4.66 while Public Bank trimmed six sen to RM25.
Other top performing stocks included Heineken, rising 18 sen to MR20.84, Ideal United Bintang gaining 11 sen to RM1.74 and Southern Acids climbing nine sen to RM3.90.
Mi Equipment snapped four straight days of gains, losing 20 sen to RM3.12. UMW also slipped 13 sen to RM5.24 and Litrak weighed 11 sen to RM4.61.
Oil rose for a third day on Thursday amid another drawdown in US inventories and strong U.S. gasoline demand, while signs OPEC may not raise output to address shrinking supplies from Iran also supported prices, Reuters reported.
WTI crude rose 61 cents to US$71.73 a barrel while Brent crude gained 27 cents to US$79.67 a barrel.
The ringgit rose against a basket of currencies as the US dollar came under pressure from a lack of positive catalysts and investment dollars trickled back into emerging markets.
The local currency strengthened 0.2% against the US dollar to 4.1377, 0.5% against the pound sterling at 5.4415 and 0.1% against the Singapore dollar at 3.0229.
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