KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia slipped back in early morning trade along with other Asian markets as the US trade tariffs on US$200bil of Chinese imports look all but certain to take effect this week.
The deadline for public commentary on the tariffs will expire on Sept 5.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan fell 0.2% while Japan's Nikkei fell 0.4 percent though trade could be subdued due to a U.S. market holiday on Monday.
At 9.15am, the FBM KLCI was down 7.26 points to 1,812.4. There were 330.38 million shares traded valued at RM142.09mil. There were 319 decliners versus 125 gainers and 207 counters unchanged.
Actively traded stocks included MyEG, which lost three sen to RM1.46, Sapura Energy
, which fell half a sen to 33.5 sen and XOX, which shaved half a sen to 6.5 sen.
Among the top gainers, F&NB rose 52 sen to RM38.52, Petron Malaysia climbed 20 sen to RM8.70 and MPI added 16 sen to RM12.46.
Meanwhile, Hong Leong Financial Group dropped 78 sen to RM18.84, Nestle slid 40 sen to RM146.60 and Hengyuan trimmed 40 sen to RM7.03.
Oil prices held near their highest levels since mid-July, supported by impending U.S. sanctions on Iran's oil industry and falling Venezuelan output, Reuters reported.
Benchmark Brent crude oil was almost flat at US$77.59 a barrel, not far from Thursday's seven-week high of US$78.03 per barrel.
US crude futures fetched US$69.82 per barrel, not far off US$70.50 marked on Thursday, their highest levels since July 20.
Win a prize this Mother's Day by subscribing to our annual plan now! T&C applies.
