KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia's benchmark index entered the lunch break little changed as investors failed to capitalise on a jump in regional optimism following US policymakers' decision to raise the debt ceiling.
At 12.30pm, the FBM KLCI was down 0.06 points to 1,402.92 after a volatile morning session that saw the index dipping in and out of the red.
The market breadth was negative with 430 decliners compared to 313 gainers. Trading volume was 1.62 billion shares valued at RM906.83mil.
The performance falls behind that of key regional markets, which have rallied on the back of the debt agreement between US policymakers.
Japan's Nikkei rose 1% to 31,210, South Korea's Kospi gained 0.2% to 2,558 and China's composite index added 0.15% to 3,217.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong's Hang Seng was down 0.3% to 18,697 and Australia's ASX200 was up 1% to 7,223.
On Bursa Malaysia, bank counters were mixed with Maybank adding three sen to RM8.61, Public Bank falling two sen to RM3.88 and Hong Leong Bank shaving six sne to RM19.52.
Axiata was a leading laggards after falling 13 sen to RM2.78 while Press Metal
helped to support the index after gaining nine sen to RM4.83.
Most active on the market was Cloudpoint Technology, which was the most actively traded over the morning session, rising 17 sen to 55 sen on the back of 311.28 million shares traded.
Bahvest was down two sen to 20.5 sen after its announced a delay to the release of its first-quarter results owing to a recent raid by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission.
YTL meanwhile was up 5.5 sen to 89 sen.
