KUALA LUMPUR: With no fresh catalyst to lift sentiment, the domestic equities market continued on its downward trajectory ahead of key US inflation data.
At 12.30pm, the FBM KLCI entered the lunch break five points lower at 1,533.42, its lowest closing level in three weeks, amid a broader market sell-off underpinned by 546 counters in the red.
The trading volume was 2.12 billion shares valued at RM1.49bil.
Bursa Malaysia is awaiting the return of foreign inflows as a global rally fuelled by rate-cut hopes take a breather, in anticipation of a further confirmation from the US Federal Reserve.
The telco sector was among the leading laggards on Wednesday with Axiata falling six sen to RM2.72, CelcomDigi dropping five sen to RM4.23 and Maxis shedding one sen to RM3.39.
Plantations also slumped, on the back of Kuala Lumpur Kepong down six sen to RM22.28, IOI dropping five sen to RM3.96, Chin Teck falling 13 sen to RM7.60 and Batu Kawan sliding 26 sen to RM19.64.
Meanwhile, some counters seeing buying interest included Apollo climbing 33 sen to RM7.28 as it bounced back to near record levels, and Scientex gaining 18 sen to RM4.08 following a positive results announcement.
Market debutant Zantat was up 11.5 sen to 36.5 sen, off its intra-morning high of 42 sen.
In Asian markets, the results were mixed as Japan's equities headed higher by 1.1% to 40,847 while China's composite index slipped 0.5% to 3,015.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng dropped 0.6% to 16,512.
