At 9.05am, the FBM KLCI was down 8.36 points to 1,538.46, dragged lower by a downturn in investor sentiment as Wall Street markets fell sharply overnight on the back of a spike in Treasury yields.
The Nasdaq was worst hit, sliding 2.8% as tech stocks were routed in its worst day since March, while the Dow Jones lost 1.6% and the S&P 500 dropped 2%.
"Investors remain cautious while waiting for economic activities to return to normal, considering the significant pullback on Wall Street overnight," said Malacca Securities Research in a note.
Stocks on Malaysia's blue-chip index were overwhelmingly lower with declines across the financial, telco and energy sectors as investors took profit off yesterday's rally.
Tenaga Nasional was the rare exception, rising six sen to RM9.74 amid a sea of red.
In banks, Public Bank was down three sen to RM4.08 and Hong Leong Bank slid 12 sen to RM18.60.
Among plantation plays, PPB was down 16 sen to RM18.30 and Sime Darby Plantation
fell four sen to RM3.57.Petronas Chemicals slid one sen to RM8.64 while Press Metal
dropped two sen to RM5.75.THere was some pullback in the semiconductor sector following the sharp retreat on the Nasdaq.
MPI fell 38 sne to RM44.62, Vitrox slid 18 sen to RM20.42 and KESM slid 14 sen to RM13.
On the actives list, market-debutant CEKD stood at the top of investors' radar screens. The stock jumped eight sen to 56 sen on the back of 45.89 million shares traded.
Other leading actives included Encorp
up 5.5 sen to 65 sen and DNeX down one sen to 79.5 sen.