KUALA LUMPUR: Investors on Bursa Malaysia turned to profit-taking in the Monday morning session as China cancelled scheduled bilateral trade talks with the US amid a lack of positive leads to sustain the previous week's rally.
Key markets Japan, China and South Korea were closed on Monday due to Autumn festivals and holidays.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng index, which remained open, shed 1.25%
At 12.30pm, the FBM KLCI was down 10.35 points o 1,800.29. Trading volume was 800.46 million valued at RM560.64mil. THere were 216 gainers versus 465 decliners and 300 counters unchanged.
Counters on the 30-stock index were mostly lower, led by Tenaga Nasional shedding 12 sen to RM15.56.
Among other leading decliners, Sime Darby Plantation
dropped nine sen to RM5.27, MAxis fell seven sen to RM5.81 and Digi shed five sen to RM4.79.
Stocks that rose were IOI gaining two sen to RM4.50, Petronas Gas adding 12 sen to RM19.12 and Telekom Malaysia adding one sen to RM3.22.
On the broader market, Dutch Lady added RM1.30 to RM65.40,VItrox rose eight sen to RM7.78 and BAT gained eight sen to RM33.24.
United Plantation rose 38 sen to RM27.50 on news of its acquisition of plantation land from Pinehill Pacific, which leapt 12 sen to 56 sen.
Meanwhile oil market jumped as Opec and Russia decided against lower oil prices ahead of US sanctions on Iran.
WTI crude rose 81 cent sto US$71.59 a barrel while Brent crude gained US$1.01 to US$79.81 a barrel.
In currencies, the ringgit was little changed against the US dollar at 4.1337. It rose 0.9% against the pound sterling at 5.4067 and 0.1% against the Singapore dollar at 3.0256.
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