KUALA LUMPUR: The local bourse went lower along with other Asian markets as tech counters on Wall Street slipped after a brief rebound.
Investors rotated out of the year's top-performing sector and shifted money to banks, retailers and other stocks that were seen to benefit the most from promised tax cuts, according to Reuters.
At 12.30pm, the FBM KLCI was 5.03 points lower at 1,719.81 points. Turnover was 741.47 million shares with a value of RM864.6mil. There were 314 decliners to 242 advancers with 484 counters unchanged.
Hong Leong Bank, which rose 11% in the previous session, shaved gains, dropping 76 sen to RM16.24.
Maybank also retraced some gains from the previous session slipping 12 sen to RM9.26 while IJM dropped five sen to RM2.97.
Other laggards include Hong Leong Financial Group lost 38 sen to RM16.56.
Genting weighed, dropping nine sen to RM8.82, along with IOI, slipping four sen to RM4.46 and KL Kepong, falling four sen to RM24.40.
Among gainers, Petronas Chemicals moved higher by nine sen to RM7.54, Petronas Gas rose 18 sen to RM16.28, Digi advanced six sen to RM4.71 and Maxis edged up one sen higher to RM5.91.
On the wider market, Allianz dropped 20 sen to RM12.88, Shangri-La Hotels dropped 14 sen to RM5.05 and Sam Engineering & Equipment
fell 14 sen to RM5.05.
Refiner Petron Malaysia pushed 64 sen higher to RM12.18 while Henyuan rose 16 sen to RM11.34. Apex Healthcare gained 20 sen to RM5.30.
Oil prices slipped on Wednesday following a report by the American Petroleum Institute that showed a rise in gasoline stock in the week to December and inventories of distillates, Reuters reported.
US light crude dropped 25 cents to US$57.37 a barrel while Brent crude slipped 26 cents to US$62.60 a barrel.
In currencies, the ringgit was little changed against the greenback at 4.067. It fell 0.21% against the pound sterling at 5.4623 and edged marginally lower against the Singapore dollar at 3.0198.
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