At 12.30pm, the key index was up 1.69 points to 1,602.28. Trading volume had picked up to 4.54 billion shares valued at RM2.61bil.
Glove counters had come back into the spotlight with Top Glove rising 42 sen to RM5.33, Hartalega
climbing 74 sen to RM9.99 and Supermax climbing 63 sen to RM4.66.However, most of the index gains were offset by retreat in the financial counters.
Maybank dropped 18 sen to RM8.30, Public Bank slid two sne to RM4.20, CIMB fell seven sen to RM4.28 and Hong Leong Bank lost 12 sen to RM18.54.
Meanwhile, in telcos, Maxis was up nine sen to RM4.69 amid a suspension in the trading of Axiata and Digi shares pending a material announcement.
A briefing by Axiata president and CEO Datuk Izzaddin Idris at 2pm is expected to shed some light on the telcos' plans.
Among actives, LKL jumped 15.5 sen to 44 sen, Luster rose two sen to 25.5 sen and AT Systemization
gained 0.5 sen to 10 sen.US futures are on the rise following the release of the US Federal Reserve's meeting minutes that showed members were in no rush to scale back on bond buying.
This comes ahead of US Fed chairman Jerome Powell's speech at an IMF event later tonight.
Asian markets were mixed however with Japan's Nikkei dropping 0.3% and South Korea's Kospi mostly flat.
China's composite index was up 0.2%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng climbed 0.8% and Australia's ASX200 added 0.9%.