KLCI extends decline amid US earnings contraction fears

KUALA LUMPUR: The FBM KLCI extended its fall, tracking Wall Street losses overnight on fears that US corporate earnings could have been negatively impacted by the US-China trade war.

At 12.30pm, the local index slipped 3.13 points to 1,654.4. Trading volume was 1.56 billion shares valued at RM811.78mil. There were 432 decliners versus 231 gainers and 379 counters unchanged.

Petronas Chemicals experienced a sharp decline with a 26 sen drop to RM7.66 while Maxis shed four sen to RM5.60 and Public Bank dropped six sen to RM22.90.

i-Stone continued to top the most actively traded list, losing 3.5 sen to 21 sen following a strong advance on its debut yesteday.

Other stocks seeing heavy investor interest included Netx unchanged at 1.5 sen and KNM down 1.5 sen to 37.5 sen.

Over on Wall Street, Netflix's share price was sent tumbling 12% in after-market trade as data showed it had lost US streaming customers for the first time in eight years and missed targets for overseas subscribers.

Asian markets picked up on Wall Street's weak overnight performance, which sent major indices lower.

The Shanghai Composite Index slid 0.65%, the CSI300 Index dropped 0.6% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index fell 0.5%. Japan's Nikkei Index plunged 1.8% while South Korea's Kospi Index dropped 0.4%

Oil prices were steady on Thursday after falling in the previous session on rising US stockpiles. US crude slid two cents to US$56.76 a barrel and Brent crude rose 10 cents to US$63.76 a barrel.

In currencies, the ringgit was flat against the US dollar at 4.1110 and the pound sterling at 5.1133. It was down 0.1% against the Singapore dollar at 3.0246.