At 12.30pm, the key index was down 3.84 points to 1,519.41. Trading interest in the domestic market remained on pace with yesterday's levels, amid a return of retail participation in the market owing to the renewed conditional movement control order.
Heavyweight glove counter Top Glove shed 14 sen to RM14.16 while Hartalega
slipped 10 sen to RM18.06.Smaller rival Supermax dropped 14 sen to RM9.34 and Kossan Rubber
lost 12 sen to RM7.86.The US Department of Labour added Malaysian rubber glove to its latest list of goods produced with forced labour, triggering some profit-taking in glove counters today, said Malacca Securities Research.
"Elsewhere, the re-implementation of the Conditional Movement Control Order saw trading activities turning up the heat again as rotation plays are shifting towards the healthcare thematic space," it said.
Some slight gains in the financial sector were not enough to offset the losses on the FBM KCLI. Maybank gained one sen to RM7.25, Public Bank gained four sen to RM15.98 and CIMB added one sen to RM3.06. Hong Leong Bank lost two sen to RM14.98.
Meanwhile, Bursa market debutant Samaiden was in the spotlight, surging 47.5 sen to 95.5 sen, and coming in as the third most actively traded stock on the bourse with 117.12 million units exchanging hands.
MTronic was the top traded stock, slipping 2.5 sen to 7.5 sen on 260.83 million units crossed. This was followed by Luster, gaining one sen to 15 sen on 153.77 million shares traded.
There was a mixed result in Asian markets. Japan's Nikkei was down 0.5% while China's key index was mostly flat. Hong Kong's Hang Seng dropped 1.3% and Australia's ASX200 gained 0.6%.