KUALA LUMPUR, March 13 ― Shares on Bursa Malaysia turned mixed at the end of the morning session today on mild buying support especially in heavyweight counters.

At lunch break, the benchmark FBM KLCI ended at 1,820.1, up 1.5 points, after fluctuating between 1,818.53 and 1,821.57 throughout the morning session.

Heavyweights YTL Corporation and Maybank rose three sen to RM1.55 and RM9.54 respectively, while Kuala Lumpur Kepong added 16 sen to RM23.96.          

A dealer said market sentiment remained fragile in the absence of fresh market leads.

“Investors are awaiting data for China's retail sales and industrial production as well as US retail sales and jobless claims for further market clues,” he added.

On the scoreboard, the Finance Index improved 2.85 points to 16,362.84 while the Plantation Index slipped 14.49 points to 8,963.58 and the Industrial Index decreased 0.6 point to 3,172.96.

The FBM Emas Index rose 2.24 points to 12,614.89, the FBMT100 Index was 2.6 points better at 12,280.24 and the FBM Ace added 42.79 points to 6,681.76, while the FBM 70 eased 26.38 points to 13,862.99.   

Market breadth was negative, with losers outnumbering gainers 328 to 292, while 328 counters were unchanged, 683 untraded and 15 others suspended.

Turnover totalled 918.51 million shares worth RM908.27 million

Among actives, Infortech Alliance fell 1.5 sen to 43.5 sen, KNM-WA rose two sen to 21 sen and Iris Corporation added 1.5 sen to 60 sen.

Of the heavyweights, Tenaga Nasional was flat at RM11.92, while CIMB and Axiata increased one sen to RM7.03 and RM6.49, respectively. ― Bernama