KUALA LUMPUR: The FBM KLCI ended flat at midday, having retraced mild losses over the course of the session as Washington and Beijing agreed to a trade truce ahead of their G20 Summit meeting over this weekend.
Investors are on tentherhooks over the scheduled meeting on Saturday although the temporary suspension of further trade tariffs serves as a positive prelude to the actual negotations.
At 12.30pm, the local index was just 0.03 points higher at 1,674.52. Trading volume was muted at 862.63 million shares valued at RM706.72mil. There were 314 decliners versus 290 gainers and 363 counters unchanged.
Heavyweights leading gains on the index were Tenaga Nasional adding 10 sen to RM13.88, MISC gaining 10 sen to RM7.25 and Digi rising three sen to RM5.03.
On the wider stock exchange, most actively traded counters were Sapura Energy
shedding one sen to 30.5 sen, IWCity adding two sen to RM1.08 and SMTrack gaining 0.5 sen to 21 sen.
Chinese markets rose as investors bet some headway being made at the G20 talks. The Shanghai Composite Index gained 0.9%, the CSI300 Index added 1.3% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index climbed 1.1%.
Japan's Nikkei Index was also up 1% while South Korea's Kospi Index gained 0.8%.
Oil prices took off some of the previous session's strong gains, having risen as much as 2% on Wednesday.
US crude lost 29 cents to US$59.09 a barrel and Brent rude declined 27 cents to US$66.22 a barrel.
In currencies, the ringgit stayed mostly flat against the US dollar at 4.1502. It was also flat against the Singapore dollar at 3.0628 and down 0.1% against the pound sterling at 5.2634.
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