KUALA LUMPUR: Foreign fund selling continued to weigh on Bursa Malaysia, with the FBM KLCI falling below the key support level of 1,700 in late morning trade on Thursday.
At 11.02am, the KLCI was down 9.92 points or 0.58% to 1,699.83. Turnover was 743.72 million shares valued RM576.26mil. There were 206 gainers, 463 losers, 291 counters unchanged.
The decline on Bursa Malaysia contrasted with the key Asian markets.
Asian shares crept ahead on Thursday as a lull in the Sino-US trade tussle and talk of more Chinese stimulus helped calm nerves, while tensions in the oil market grew ahead of an OPEC meeting that could expand the supply of crude, Reuters reported.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan gained 0.4%, while Japan's Nikkei added 0.7%.
BAT fell the most, down 60 sen to RM36.06, Petronas Dagangan 50 sen to RM24.36, Nestke 40 sen lower at RM145.80.
Telekom Malaysia fell to the lowest since late 2011, down 40 sen to RM3.23 after the new federal government announced plans to cut broadband prices by 25% by year-end. Axiata lost 17 sen to RM4.20.
MyEG rose two sen to RM1.02 in active trade. CIMB Equities Research is keeping its forecasts and target price of RM1.22 for MyEG, still based on a technology sector 2019F target price-to-earnings (P/E) of 15 times.