KUALA LUMPUR: The FBM KLCI bucked the regional trend in Wednesday morning trade as it failed to pick up on the rising investor confidence in equities.
At 12.30pm, the local benchmark index was down 2.99 points to 1,684.42 on turnover of 1.4 billion shares valued at RM771.25mil. There were 362 gainers versus 317 decliners and 347 counters unchanged.
From a technical standpoint, the index remains trapped in consolidation mode and is in danger of falling below the 50-day simple moving average at 1,680, which would indicate a slide in sentiment.
In the wider Asian region however, markets tracked the overnight rally on Wall Street where the Dow Jones and Nasdaq gained about 1.5% each as investors turned positive over the likelihood of Washington and Beijing working out a trade deal by March 1.
US President Donald Trump had expressed confidence in meeting the deadline even as investors cheered that US lawmakers were moving towards a spending deal that would avert another partial government shutdown.
The Shanghai Composite Index was up 0.9%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng gained 0.8%, Japan's Nikkei was up 1.4% and South Korea's Kospi grew 0.4%.
Southeast Asian indices were also mostly up, excepting the FBM KLCI and the Philippines PSE Composite Index, which was down 1.2%.
Among the biggest decliners on the KLCI were CIMB which lost six sen to RM5.76, IOI, which dropped seven sen to RM4.55 and Maybank, which dipped four sen to RM9.52.
IHH advanced nine sen to RM5.56, Petronas Chemicals rose four sen to RM8.45 and RHB added seven sen to RM5.60.
The top active counters on the stock exchange were Barakah
trading unchanged at 13.5 sen, Tatt Giap trading unchanged at 10 sen and Bumi Armada down 0.5 sen at 22 sen.
Crude oil markets were also on a bullish mood as OPEC indicated that it had made deep supply cuts in January even was US sanctions hit Venezuela's oil exports.
US crude rose 55 cents to US$53.65 a barrel and Brent crude grew 65 cents to US$63.07 a barrel.
On the forex market, investors moving into emerging market assets due to the improved global sentiment gave the ringgit a 0.3% boost over the US dollar to 4.0655.
The local currency was lower 0.15% against the pound sterling at 5.2465 and little changed against the Singapore dollar at 3.0014.
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