KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia turned south over the course of morning trading as investors sought out new leads after having digested recent global developments.
While Malaysia's inflation report in October was revealed as slightly lower than the market consensus, Bursa Malaysia failed to return to a rally given the ongoing uncertainties headed into the year-end.
US markets were closed overnight for the Thanksgiving Day holiday, which only underpinned the scarcity of leads for investors.
At 12.30pm, Malaysia's benchmark FBM KLCI was down 0.78 points to 1,452.51, with 506 decliners compared to 326 gainers on the broader market.
Trading volume was 2.08 billion shares valued at RM1.28bil.
Among blue chips, MISC was down six sen to RM7.13, PETRONAS Gas shed 12 sen to RM16.76 and Public Bank lost two sen to RM4.25.
Genting rose 14 sen to RM4.50 on the back of its positive earnings surprise while Genting Malaysia also rallied five sen to RM2.62 on its own quarterly result.
Topping the actives list, Top Glove was up 0.5 sen to 89 on heavy volume of 112.42 million shares exchanging hands.
Other leading actives included Hong Seng gaining 0.5 sen to three sen and Leform adding 1.5 sen to 30 sen.
Meanwhile, China's composite index slid 0.5% to 3,047 after investors cashed out of the recent rebound.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng dove 1.4% to 17,663.
Japan's Nikkei was up 0.75% to 33,701 while South Korea's Kospi dropped 0.5% to 2,501.
