BURSA Malaysia tumbled to below 1,600 points in tandem with other Asian stock markets following sell-offs on Wall Street that are fuelled by China-US trade anxiety.

The FBM KLCI opened 3.8 points lower at 1,599.94 this morning.

At 11.45am, it clawed back some gains to reach 1,602.47 points after briefly hitting 1,589.79 points, which was the lowest at early trade.

Kenanga Research said in its report that the FBM KLCI is continuing a downtrend trend with no technical indicator that could support a potential reversal at play.

Going forward, continuous negative news from around the world and overall weak investor sentiment will drag the index to 1,585 (S1) and 1,570 (S2) points.

“Conversely, resistance can be identified at 1,630 (R1) and 1,650 (R2) if there is unexpected positive news flow.”

Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that Asian stocks continued their downward trend, giving up more than half the gains for this year as investors flagged concerns over the trade tensions between the two economic superpowers.

The MSCI Asia Pacific Index fell 6%, after President Donald Trump slapped additional tariffs on US$200 billion (RM840 billion) worth of Chinese goods.

Technology and oil and gas counters were among the most actively traded on Bursa Malaysia.

Technology stocks took a hit, thanks to the Huawei-Google saga.

Vortex Consolidated Bhd was the most active counter at 11.13am, falling 1 sen to 29.5 sen, with 69.24 million shares done.

The decline in crude oil prices led to oil and gas stocks, such as Sapura Energy Bhd, Barakah Offshore Petroleum Bhd, Dayang Enterprise Holdings Bhd and Bumi Armada Bhd, to rank among the most traded counters.

Sapura Energy, the second most active counter, lost 1 sen or 3.23% to 30 sen, with 65.69 million shares changing hands.

Barakah fell 2.5 sen to 4.5 sen with 56.12 million shares traded.

At noon, Brent crude oil was trading 0.61% lower at US$70.56 per barrel. – May 23, 2019.