Mumbai, India (BBN) – The Sensex and Nifty were trading higher by nearly 0.3 per cent due to buying by retail and domestic institutional investors.
Also, short-covering of outstanding positions, with today being the last session of February series expiry in the derivatives segment, boosted the domestic sentiment, reports The Hindu Business Line.
At 10am, the 30-share BSE index Sensex was up 63.36 points or 0.22 per cent at 28,928.07 and the 50-share NSE index Nifty was up 21.1 points or 0.24 per cent at 8,948.
Among BSE sectoral indices, TECk index gained the most by 1.78 per cent, followed by IT 1.53 per cent, realty 0.61 per cent and consumer durables 0.45 per cent.
On the other hand, power index was down 0.34 per cent, auto 0.33 per cent, FMCG 0.24 per cent and metal 0.1 per cent.
Top five Sensex gainers were Bharti Airtel (4.94 per cent), TCS (+2.34 per cent), Wipro (+1.36 per cent), Infosys (+1.28 per cent) and HDFC Bank (+1.02 per cent), while the major losers were ICICI Bank (-0.96 per cent), NTPC (-0.66 per cent), Tata Steel (-0.56 per cent), Asian Paints (-0.46 per cent) and Adani Ports (-0.45 per cent).
EARLY TRADE
The 30-share index, which had gained 709.15 points in the previous five sessions, rallied 105.54 points or 0.37 per cent to 28,970.25.
Technology, realty, consumer durables, IT, oil and gas and healthcare sector stocks were the major gainers.
Shares of telecom major Bharti Airtel zoomed 10 per cent after it announced the decision to acquire Telenor India assets.
Other telecom shares such as Idea Cellular rose 7 per cent, Reliance Communication gained 3.92 per cent and Tata Teleservices went up by 4.52 per cent.
The NSE Nifty also rose 30.25 points or 0.33 per cent to 8,957.15.
Brokers said that the market mood remained buoyant, bolstered by retail as well as domestic institutional investors’ buying coupled with covering-up of short positions by speculators.
BBN/SK/AD