KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia stayed firmly in the red over the morning session as global equities fell amid political tensions in Washington.
While trading volume was thin owing to the festive season, among the major Asian indices South Korea's Kospi dropped 1.5% although the Shanghai Composite Index and Japan's Nikkei were only slightly lower. Hong Kong's stock exchange was closed for Boxing Day.
Singapore's Straits Times Index led the losses in Southeast Asia, dropping 1.2%.
At 12.30pm, the FBM KLCI was nearly 20 points lower at 1,668.69. Turnover was 694.67mil valued at RM427.74mil. There were 592 decliners compared to 118 gainers and 230 counters unchanged.
Twenty-six of the 30 stocks on the benchmark index saw losses, led by Tenaga Nasional, which shed 52 sen to RM13.48 after strong gains seen over the previous sessions.
Among other leading decliners, IHH dropped 12 sen to RM5.34, Petronas Gas slid 42 sen to RM18.76 and Maxis fell nine sen to RM5.26.
Gainers were Sime Darby Plantation
adding two sen to RM4.6, RHB edging up one sen to RM5.27, Hap Seng Consolidated rising one sen to RM9.87 and Dialog gaining one sen to RM3.03.
Most actively traded counters were Sapura Energy losing one sen to 30.5 sen, Hubline holding steady at four sen and Hibiscus shedding three sen to 77 sen.
In oil markets, the rout seemed to have stopped for now as US crude rose 27 cents to USUS$42.80 a barrel while Brent crude stood unchanged at US$50.57 a barrel.
The ringgit was 0.1% higher against the US dollar at 4.1785 as the political uncertainty sent the greenback lower. The ringgit was slightly lower against the pound sterling at 5.3067 and unchanged against the Singapore dollar at 3.0467.
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