KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia's stock market slipped in morning trade as Asian markets remained cautious ahead of the central bank meeting scheduled in the coming days.
On the investor calendar are monetary policy meetings by the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of Japan as well as a slew of corporate earnings results scheduled for release.
At 12.30pm, the benchmark FBM KLCI was down 4.49 points to 1,437.41.
There were 596 decliners compared to 175 gainers, which indicated an overwhelmingly negative sentiment on the market.
There were 1.44 billion shares traded for a value of RM657.15mil.
PETRONAS Chemicals was down six sen to RM7.24 while Press Metal
shed three sen to RM4.85.
Among the leading banks, Maybank fell one sen to RM8.99 and Public Bank slid two sen to RM4.15.
There was selling in technology counters led by MPI down 10 sen to RM26.58, Mi Technovation down four sen to RM1.79 ad Unisem sliding 12 sen to RM2.97.
Top actives were Kanger up one sen to 14.5 sen, MQ Technologies rising 0.5 sen to three sen and Key Asic down one sen to eight sen.
