Indian equity benchmarks were higher on Thursday ahead of the week-end of index futures and option contracts, amid indications from other Asian markets. Asian stocks were strong on Thursday after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the U.S. economy was “still far from the levels the central bank wanted to see before it cut its monetary path.”
At 9:26 am, the Sensex was up 85 points at 53,009 and the Nifty 50 was up 28 points at 15,882.
MSCI’s broader index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan remained unchanged at the opening trade, with Japan’s Nikkei falling 0.4 percent.
Overnight, Wall Street shares were mixed, with the S&P up 0.12 percent and the Nasdaq down 0.22 percent.
On its return home, fifteen of the 19 sector gauges compiled by BSE traded higher with a gain of nearly 2 per cent of the S&P BSE Capital Goods Index.
The S&P BSE Industrial, Information Technology, Healthcare and Basic Materials indices also rose by 0.3-1 per cent.
On the other hand, consumer durables, energy, metal and oil & gas indices are trading with a negative bias.
The broader markets outperformed the S&P BSE Mid-Cap Index by 0.41 per cent and the Small-Cap Index by 0.7 per cent.
Larsen & Toubro Nifty gained 3.5 per cent to close at Rs 1,599. HCL Technologies, Tech Mahindra, Ultratech Cement, Wipro, HDFC Life, Dr Reddy’s Labs, HDFC Bank, Mahindra & Mahindra, Grasim Industries and SBI Life also gained 0.5-1.5 per cent.
Among the losers on the flip side were ONGC, Titan, Asian Paints, Maruti Suzuki, Coal India, ITC, NTPC, Hero MotoCorp, Infosys, Nestle India and Bajaj Fiserv.
The overall market width was very positive as 1,761 shares moved up and 853 declined on the BSE.
