Australian shares were poised to open lower on Thursday with tech stocks expected to drag, as major indexes on Wall Street slipped from record levels in the overnight session.

Tech industry giants Tesla, Amazon.com, Microsoft and Apple weighed the most on the S&P 500 and Nasdaq indexes during US trade.

The local share price index futures fell 0.5%, a 90.9-point discount to the underlying S&P/ASX 200 index close. The benchmark gained 0.5% on Wednesday. New Zealand's benchmark S&P/NZX 50 index rose 0.4% by 2131 GMT.