Mumbai, India (BBN) - The Sensex and Nifty were trading higher by nearly 0.4 per cent on increased buying by funds and retail investors amid firm Asian cues.
Covering of pending short positions ahead of the December expiry of derivatives tomorrow — this year’s last — which supported the upside, reports The Hindu Business Line.
At 11:25am, the 30-share BSE index Sensex was up 84.72 points or 0.32 per cent at 26,298.16 and the 50-share NSE index Nifty was up 34.45 points or 0.43 per cent at 8,067.30.
Among BSE sectoral indices, healthcare index gained the most by 1.29 per cent, TECk 0.86 per cent, IT 0.78 per cent and infrastructure 0.67 per cent.
Top five Sensex gainers were Wipro (+2.02%), Coal India (+1.8%), Axis Bank (+1.66%), Dr Reddy's (+1.3%) and Asian Paints (+1.3%), while the major losers were Tata Steel (-1.73%), Tata Motors (-0.743%), Reliance (-0.5%), L&T (-0.38%) and Power Grid (-0.22%).
Asia stocks followed Wall Street higher on Wednesday, while the dollar firmed against the yen following the release of upbeat US economic data overnight.
Crude oil prices held large gains on expectations of supply tightening once oil-producing nations implement a scheduled output cut.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 0.4 per cent.
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