Glove counters, which had been bought up to historic highs in light of the pandemic and were expected to consolidate further amid developments on the vaccine front, succumbed to a steep sell-off.
At 12.30pm, the FBM KLCI had dropped 26.56 points to 1,600.65. Trading volume remained on pace with 4.49 billion shares valued at RM3.65bil.
The number of stocks in the red overwhelmed gainers 990 to 274, while 276 were unchanged.
The most heavily traded stock of the morning was Top Glove, which recorded a whopping 66 sen or 10.78% fall to RM5.46. Hartalega
was also deep in the red after sliding RM1.66 or 13.67% to RM10.48 while Supermax shed 47 sen or 7.82% to RM5.54.Other top traded counters included Sapura Energy
down 0.5 sen to 12 sen and Dynacia up one sen to 14 sen.Malacca Securities Research said in a morning note that the FBM KLCI has formed a bearish candle to retreat below the 20-say exponential moving average, which suggests that the pullback is still in place.
However, it expects bargain-hunting activities to emerge as investors nibble on beaten-down stocks.
Across Asia, markets were mostly higher on optimism over the recovering economy despite the rising number of Covid-19 cases, which threatened to put Tokyo in lockdown.
China's composite index was up 0.9% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng rose 0.75%. South Korea's Kospi jumped 2.4% while Australia's ASX200 added 1.4%.
Japan's Nikkei was down 0.5%