KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia's blue-chip FBM KLCI was negative at midday after the rally gave way to profit-taking at the mid-morning.
Most of the index's constituents were lower as traders cashed in the previous day's strong rally in anticipation of the release of the country's 2Q economic report this Friday.
At 12.30pm, the FBM KLCI was down 5.19 points to 1,714.59, trimming its progress after hitting a seven-week high earlier in the day.
Traders were seen rotating into small caps on Bursa Malaysia, which have been broadly negative in recent sessions. The advancing issues outpaced decliners 509 to 459, as attention shifted once more to technology stocks.
The AI-themed rebound on Wall Street shored up sentiment in local semiconductor shares, leading the tech sector 1.8% higher. Plantations stocks continued their ascent, gaining 0.45% while consumer services gained 0.3%.
Financial services were among the biggest laggards, dropping 0.6%, while utilities also slipped 0.6 and healthcare shaved 0.15%.
In intra-morning trade, there were a total of 2.68 million shares done on Bursa Malaysia for RM1.44mil.
Some notable price movements on the FBM KLCI included Hong Leong Bank dropping 28 sen to RM21.96, CIMB shedding six sen to RM7.71 and PETRONAS Chemicals sliding 11 sen to RM4.58.
SD Guthrie rose 11 sen to RM6.61, Nestle gained RM1.50 to RM92 and IHH added 20 sen to RM8.65.
On the actives list, Tanco jumped three sen to 34.5 sen, VS Industry gained 1.5 sen to 22.5 sen and Enest was down 2.5 sen to 10.5 sen.
Meanwhile, Asia's major markets were mostly higher. South Korea's Kospi exploded higher by 7.78% to 7,390 as the country's chip makers soared on softer US inflation data.
Japan's Nikkei gained 1.22% to 68,572.
In China, the Shanghai Composite index dropped 0.19% to 3,959 and the CSI 300 was nearly flat at 4,795. Hong Kong's Hang Seng rallied 1.54% to 24,715.
