KUALA LUMPUR: Blue chips staged a relief rally, riding on the firmer Wall Street close as a rate cut drew near, while Petronas stocks, Tenaga Nasional and Public Bank led the gainers.

At 9.12am, the KLCI was up 5.91 points or 0.36% to 1,654.84. Turnover was 215.12 million shares valued at RM60.28mil. There were 184 gainers, 84 losers and 188 counters unchanged.

Reuters reported Asian stocks gained and the dollar sagged after a top Federal Reserve official all but cemented expectations of a US interest rate cut later this month.

New York Fed President John Williams said on Thursday that policymakers need to add stimulus early to deal with too-low inflation when interest rates are near zero and cannot wait for economic disaster to unfold, in a speech read as a strong argument in favour of quick action.

The comments by Williams made it a virtual certainty the Fed would opt to cut interest rates by 25 basis points (bps) at its July 30-31 policy meeting and also fuelled expectations of an even deeper 50 bp reduction.

At Bursa, Petronas Dagangan rose 12 sen to RM24.40 and Petronas Gas added 10 sen to RM16.90. Tenaga was up six sen to RM13.84.

Sime Plantations gained 10 sen to RM4.80 and Public Bank was up six sen to RM22.92.

Complete Logistics was the top gainer, up 12.5 sen to 93.5 sen. Perstimma and Can-One added seven sen each to RM4.77 and RM3.43.

Scomi Group rose two sen to 11 sen with 50 million shares done while its warrants, WB gained one sen to 4.5 sen on the entry of two new shareholders.

Among the decliners were BAT, Y&G, Yinson, CCB and Dnonce.