KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia started the day on a positive note, following the upward trend set by Wall Street's performance overnight.

At 9.15 am, the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) rose 4.50 points to 1,517.61 from Wednesday's close of 1,513.11.

The barometer index opened 0.08 of-a-point higher at 1,513.19.  On the broader market, gainers led losers 259 to 163, while 256 counters were unchanged, 1,610 untraded and 10 others suspended.

Rakuten Trade Sdn Bhd equity research vice president Thong Pak Leng said Wall Street rallied underpin by robust corporate earnings and guidance especially from the tech mega caps illustrating healthy consumer spending amid a resilient US economy.

Back home, Thong said the FBM KLCI ended flat yesterday as overall sentiment remained cautious.

"The firm noticed daily volume traded has shrunk to previous levels averaging around three billion shares depicting the lack of trading interests especially from the retailers.

"However, as buying from foreign funds continues, this hopefully may cascade down to the smaller cap stocks. "For today, we expect the benchmark index to hover within the 1,510-1,520 range," he told the Business Times.

Top actives were TWL Holdings Bhd unchanged at four sen, Widad Group Bhd flat at 11 sen and Jiankun International Bhd down 0.5 sne to 17.5 sen.