KUALA LUMPUR: An upswing in emerging market sentiment over the US Federal Reserve's signal that it may hold the interest rate hike steady in 2019 was offset by the arrest of Huawei's global chief financial officer.
The arrest of Meng Wanzhou, also the daughter of the company's founder, sought to derail trade talks between the US and China.
At 12.30pm, the FBM KLCI saw a slight decline of 3.9 points to 1,679.44. Turnover was 1.08 billion shares valued at RM635.8mil. There were 350 decliners versus 252 advancers with 318 counters unchanged.
Leading the decline, Tenaga Nasional dropped 14 sen to RM13.62, Petronas Chemicals shed seven sen to RM9.20 and Maxis fell four sen to RM5.39.
Genting stocks saw some postive momentum with Genting Malaysia rising one sen to RM2.90 and holding company Genting gaining four sen to RM6.32.
Ambank was in the spotlight in Friday trading, having been welcomed into the 30-stock FBM KLCI. The counter rose 13 sen to RM4.34.
Top Glove also made its debut on the benchmark index, rising five sen to RM5.95.
Among the most actively traded stocks, Bumi Armada
rose 0.5 sen to 16.5 sen, My EG fell three sen to RM1.12 and Sapura Energy was unchanged at 35.5 sen.
Top gainers on the stock exchange were Petron Malaysia, adding 22 sne to RM7.10, KESM, climbing 17 sen to RM8.65 and MAHB rising 16 sen to RM7.76.
Decliners were led by United Plantation falling 24 sen to RM26.42, Time dotCom dropping 23 sen to RM8.07 and Apollo sliding 21 sen to RM3.99.
Oil prices were weighed down on Friday following Thursday's Opec meeting that saw a delay in a supply cut deal as Russia's commitment to the initiative remained in doubt.
WTI crude fell 21 cents to US$51.28 a barrel while Brent crude dropped 36 cents to US$59.70 a barrel.
In currencies, the ringgit rose 0.1% against the US dollar at 4.1610. It slipped 0.25% against the pound serling at 5.3128 and was marginally lower against the Singapore dollar at 3.0399.
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