KUALA LUMPUR (Aug 18): The FBM KLCI pared some of its gains before the midday break today against a backdrop of sluggish regional markets.

At 12.30pm, the FBM KLCI was up 10.66 points to 1,571.40. The index had earlier risen to a high of 1,576.87.

Gainere led losers by 379 to 304, while 655 counters traded unchanged. Trading volume was 5.31 billion shares valued at RM3 billion.

The top gainers included Top Glove Corp Bhd, Supermax Corp Bhd, Hartalega Holdings Bhd, Kossan Rubber Industries Bhd, Rubberex Corp Bhd, Ajinomoto (M) Bhd, Comfort Gloves Bhd, Careplus Group Bhd, Adventa Bhd and Optimax Holdings Bhd.

The actively traded stocks included Borneo Oil Bhd, DGB Asia Bhd, XOX Bhd, Niche Emas Capital Holdings Bhd, Sanichi Technology Bhd, Green Packet Bhd, Vivocom International Holdings Bhd, Optimax and Sapura Energy Bhd.

The decliners included Nestle (M) Bhd, DKSH Holdings (M) Bhd, Malayan Banking Bhd, Duopharma Biotech Bhd, Apex Healthcare Bhd, LBS Bina Bhd and Tropicana Corp Bhd.

Reuters said Asian stocks inched up on Tuesday as Sino-U.S. tensions weighed on optimism generated by Wall Street's tech-driven rally, while the dollar dropped against almost all major currencies.

The Trump administration announced on Monday it would further tighten restrictions on China's Huawei Technologies Co , aimed at cracking down on its access to commercially available chips, it said.

Hong Leong IB Research said while the KLCI is expected to continue its short term range bound consolidation (within 1539-1600 range) amid domestic political uncertainty, a weak August reporting season, increasing numbers of new Covid-19 clusters and the detection of virus mutation D614G (10x more infectious) and heightened US-China geopolitical tension, the consolidations on ACE and smallcaps could be reaching the tail end following a technical rebound on the FBMACE (+2.6% after sliding 6.9% week-on-week) and FBMSCAP (+0.21% after tumbling 4.6% week-on-week) indices yesterday.