KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia's benchmark stock index climbed higher after a slow start as the market was supported by the positive Wall Street performance overnight.

       At 12.30pm, the FBM KLCI was up 7.13 points to 1,520.11. There were 613 decliners compared to 314 gainers and 415 unchanged.

       The trading volume was 2.18 billion shares valued at RM1.53bil.

       On the blue-chip index, Genting jumped 13 sen to RM4.85 while Genting Malaysia added six sen to RM2.70.

       Tenaga Nasional rose 12 sen to RM10.84 and Sime Darby Plantation rose 11 sen to RM4.53.

       In the banking sector, Maybank added five sen to RM9.31, CIMB gained one sen to RM6.24, Hong Leong Bank rose four sen to RM19.24 and Public Bank was up four sen to RM4.43.

       Top actives included Minetec up 0.5 sen to 15 sen, Velesto unchanged at 26 sen and Widad flat at 13.5 sen.

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       Asian markets were bullish on Friday on the back of expectation-beating results from Meta and Amazon, although the upcoming US job data is also limiting optimism.

       Japan's Nikkei rose 0.7% to 36,269 and South Korea's Kospi surged 2.25% to 2,599.

       China's composite index, however, was down 0.7% to 2,750 while Hong Kong's Hang Seng gained 0.6% to 15,657.