KUALA LUMPUR: The FBM KLCI remained slightly negative at midday as traders held off on buying equities amid the escalating geopolitical tension between the US and EU over the weekend.
There has been some profit-taking in local equities following the previous week's rally, which saw the index hit multi-year highs. At 12.30pm, the FBM KLCI was down 2.36 points to 1,710.38.
While the blue chips remained relatively well-supported by the inflow of foreign funds, the market's small caps have not seen the same benefit.
On the scoreboard, the domestic market registered 691 decliners compared to 285 gainers. Trading volume was 1.82 billion shares valued at RM1.25bil.
Only two sectors - financial services and consumer products and services - stayed positive amid the broad market pullback.
Plantations and utilities were seen leading the decline.
Among the blue chips, leading decliners were MISC falling 11 sen to RM7.69, Gamuda shedding six sen to to RM4.59 and RHB dropping eight sen to RM8.14.
The day's most active counter, SMRT, plunged 25 sen to 19.5 sen with 201 million shares traded.
The share had nearly hit limit down after plummeting 29 sen to 15.5 sen earlier in the day after Hong Leong Investment Bank downgraded the stock to a "sell" on the back of a "sharp earnings reset".
The research firm said in its report that DSMRT's management had indicated that its deployment pace for Tenaga Nasional is expected to slow materially in the coming years, following the opening up of TNB's SCADA vendor base.
Meanwhile, Capital A dropped four sen to 50.5 sen while AirAsia X
fell five sne ot RM1.62 following news the latter company had completed its acquisition of the former's aviation business.
In regional markets, Japan's Nikkei fell 0.86% to 53,470 while South Korea's Kospi gained 0.9% to 4,884.
China's Shanghai Composite index gained 0.13% to 4,107 and the CSI300 slipped 0.23% to 4,721. Hong Kong's Hang Seng dropped 0.99% to 26,579.
