KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia investors took the opportunity to cash in following a report from Fitch ratings agency, which downgraded the US’ top-tier sovereign credit rating from AAA to AA+.

Amid the shock selling in Asia, Malaysia’s benchmark FBM KLCI was down 6.61 points to 1,444.63 at the lunch break.

Most counters on the market were on a slide with 471 decliners compared to 282 gainers.

The trading volume as 1.47 billion shares valued at RM881.46mil.

Banks and commodities-related counters lead the decline as Maybank shed six sen to RM8.93, CIMB dropped four sen to RM5.48, Press Metal fell 11 sen to RM4.94 and PETRONAS Chemicals slid 10 sen to RM5.95.

There was also a decline in consumer counters with Nestle falling 50 sen to RM132.40, Heineken dropping 32 sen to RM25.78, Carlsberg sliding 22 sen to RM20.78, Dutch Lady dipping 14 sen to RM21.36 and QL Resources falling 13 sen to RM5.35.

Leading the actives were UEM Sunrise unchanged at 47.5 sen, KNM flat at 9.5 sen and Widad up 0.5 sen to 43 sen.

In key markets, Japan’s Nikkei led the Asian sell-off, falling 2% to 32,812 while South Korea’s Kospi dropped 1.6% to 2,625.

China’s composite index was down 0.8% to 3,263 and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng dove 2% to 19,613.