KUALA LUMPUR, May 21 ― Bursa Malaysia ended the morning session higher on an easing in pressure on technology stocks after the United States announced a temporary lifting of trade restrictions imposed on China’s Huawei Technologies last week.

At 12.30pm, the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) was up 3.96 points to 1,609.32.

The benchmark index opened 3.38 points higher at 1,608.74.

Losers led gainers 481 to 183, with 289 counters unchanged, 959 untraded and 38 others suspended.

Turnover stood at 920.43 million worth RM590.28 million.

A dealer said the latest development provided a relief to global technology stocks after a US crackdown on Huawei led chipmaker stocks in Europe and on Wall Street to slide on fears of a widening trade war.

"The US Commerce Department will allow Huawei Technologies to purchase American-made goods to maintain existing networks and provide software updates to its existing handsets, a move that seeks to minimise disruption to the telecom company’s customers around the world,” he added.

He said the department would evaluate whether to extend the exemption beyond 90 days.

Among the heavyweights, Maybank lost one sen to RM8.99, while CIMB was flat at RM5.16.

Public Bank added 14 sen to RM22.56, Petronas Chemicals gained two sen to RM8.82 and TNB perked six sen to RM11.64.

Of the actively-traded stocks, Bumi Armada and KNM slipped half-a-sen each to 19 sen and 18.5 sen respectively, and Barakah lost 1.5 sen to seven sen.

Lambo and IOI Properties were flat at seven sen and RM1.19.

The FBM Emas Index was up 4.641 points to 11,304.69, the FBMT 100 Index increased 12.101 points to 11,148.9 and the FBM Emas Shariah Index improved 3.54 points to 11,454.88.

The FBM 70 fell 47.4 points to 13,807.92, but the FBM Ace increased 9.8 points to 4,404.94.

Sector-wise, the Financial Services Index gained 56.221 points to 16,619.09, while the Plantation Index was lower by 6.55 points at 6,888.95 and the Industrial Products & Services Index was 0.51 of-a-point lower at 163.31. ― Bernama