KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia was not spared the global sell-off in equities with the benchmark index falling 2.75% in the early session.
The FBM KLCI entered the lunch break at 1,566.67 after shaving 44.38 points off last Friday's closing price.
The broader market was a sea of red with investors selling lower a whopping 1,528 stocks, compared to buying up just 61 shares.
Amid the strong selling, share turnover for the half-day soared to 4.86 billion shares, valued at RM3.59bil.
Among the leading blue chips, Tenaga dropped 60 sen to RM13.36, YTL Power shed 32 sen to RM4.17, and CIMB fell 26 sen to RM7.14.
Top actives were PHB flat at one sen, Velesto
down one sne ot 20.5 sen and MYEG sliding 8.5 sen to 88.5 sen.
The performance of the domestic equities, however, was in line with the regional trend as global investors pulled out of risky assets at a frenetic pace, triggered by recent economic data that showed the US economy could risk contraction as a result of the Federal Reserve's tightening measures.
The most hard-hit of the Asian markets, Japan's Nikkei index plunged over 7% to 33,178, erasing nearly all the gains it had made this year.
Singapore's Straits Times index saw 3.24% of its value stuck off to 7,685.
In China, the composite index maintained its composure, edging a fraction higher at 2,807, although Hong Kong's Hang Seng slid 0.22% to 16,908.
