KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia's stock benchmark climbed higher in morning trade on the back of big gains in IHH Healthcare and PETRONAS Dagangan.
The FBM KLCI was up 7.44 points to 1,604.89 as it entered the lunch break, with investors anticipating the release of corporate results over the next few days.
The broader market was negative with 513 decliners to 356 gainers as investors remained sour on lower liners. The market turnover was 1.63 billion shares valued at RM1.04bil.
Meanwhile, other Asian markets were on the backfoot following US President-elect Donald Trump's pledge to impose tariffs on all imports from Canada and Mexico, while adding on to tariffs on China.
Japan's Nikkei slid 1.43% to 38,228 and Singapore's Straits Times index fell 0.3%.
In China, the composite index was up 0.43% to 3,277 and Hong Kong's Hang Seng rose 0.49% to 19,244.
Meanwhile, IHH was among the best performers on the Malaysian market, with the blue-chip healthcare provider jumping 25 sen to RM7.25 ahead of its profit announcement this week.
PETRONAS Dagangan was also a top performer, surging 90 sen to RM18.32 following a positive results announcement.
Meanwhile, Nestle was seen weighing on the market, slumping RM1.48 to RM93.52, which represent its lowest in seven years.
Of actives, Zentech was flat at one sen, Revenue rose one sen to 15.5 sen and 3REN gained two sen to 41.5 sen.
