KUALA LUMPUR (Oct 30): The FBM KLCI reversed its losses at mid-morning today and ticked higher, but overall sentiment remained edgy in tandem with regional markets.

At 10am, the FBM KLCI was up 0.28 points to 1,684.01. The index had earlier slipped to a low of 1,680.97.

Losers led gainers by 314 to 145, while 253 counters traded unchanged. Volume was 479.33 million shares valued at RM223.89 million.

The gainers included Tenaga Nasional Bhd, BIMB Holdings Bhd, Carlsberg Brewery Malaysia Bhd, LPI Capital Bhd, AirAsia Group Bhd and Atta Global Group Bhd.

The actives included Datasonic Group Bhd, Hubline Bhd, Sapura Energy Bhd, Hibiscus Petroleum Bhd, Seacera Group Bhd, Orion IXL Bhd and My EG Services Bhd.

The losers included Ajinomoto (M) Bhd, British American Tobacco (M) Bhd, Panasonic Manufacturing Malaysia Bhd, Bursa Malaysia Bhd, Aeon Credit Service (M) Bhd, ViTrox Corp Bhd, Pentamaster Corp Bhd and Hengyuan Refining Company Bhd.

Asian shares came under pressure on Tuesday after Wall Street peers finished weaker, hurt by fresh worries about the US-China trade war and were on track for their biggest October decline since the 2008 financial crisis, according to Reuters.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan slid 0.1%, tracking falls in US stocks. The index has fallen more than 12% this month, it said.

Kenanga IB Research said Asian markets were mixed yesterday as worries over China's slowing economy spread across the region while also dragged by the selling down of China's blue-chip counters following disappointing earnings.

It said that at the closing bell, the FBM KLCI managed to claw back from its earlier losses in the second half of the trading session to end the day 0.67 points (+0.04%) higher to close at 1,683.73.

"We reckon the local index is likely to trade-downside-bias while retesting the 1,658 (S1) support level as trading volume [is] still rather thin with a bearish-bias market breath of 588 bears outnumbered 223 bulls, yesterday.

"Momentum indicators remained in the negative territory as depicted by the MACD continued trending south below the zero-line, while RSI and Stochastic ticking down in an oversold state to reflect the piling selling pressure.

"From here, we continue to view the FBM KLCI will trade downside bias towards support levels seen at 1,658 (S1) and 1,614 (S2) with resistance levels capped at 1,700 (R1) and 1,735 (R2)," it said.