Indian equity benchmarks edged higher after a mildly positive start on Friday amid mixed global cues, a day after the Nifty50 extended gains to a second straight day to finish eight points shy of the 18,000 mark. Gains in FMCG, oil & gas and metal stocks moved higher but losses in financial shares played spoilsport.

COMMERCIAL BREAK
SCROLL TO CONTINUE READING

Both headline indices began the day up 0.1 per cent. The Sensex rose 35.5 points to 60,388.7 at the open and the Nifty50 started at 18,008.1, up 15.9 points from its previous close.

At 9:27 am, the 30-scrip index was up 114.7 points or 0.2 per cent at 60,467.9 and the Nifty50 up 31.5 points or 0.2 per cent at 18,023.6.

A total of 25 stocks in the 50-scrip basket were in the green. Hindalco, SBI Life, PowerGrid, ITC and Reliance, trading around half a per cent higher each, were the top gainers. 

On the other hand, Bajaj Finance, Bajaj Finserv, TCSS, Infosys and ICICI Bank, trading between 0.7 per cent and 1.6 per cent lower, were the worst hit among blue-chip stocks. 

Reliance, HDFC Bank and ITC were the biggest boosts for the headline indices, whereas ICICI Bank, Infosys and TCS were the biggest drags.

The Nifty Bank -- whose 12 constituents include the country's largest lenders including SBI, HDFC Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank and ICICI Bank -- gyrated within a range of 275.9 points, between 42,410.1 and 42,685.9, in the first few minutes of trade. 

Overall market breadth favoured the bulls, with an advance-decline ratio of 7:5 as 1,580 stocks rose and 1,129 fell on BSE in early deals. 

"The major drag on the market is the sustained selling by FIIs... The underperformers of last year like China and Europe are doing well. Clearly, FII money is chasing lower valuations by selling in overvalued markets like India. This trend might continue imparting weakness in the Indian market," said VK Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Financial Services.

"Globally, the phenomenon of good economic news becoming bad news for markets might continue in the near term," he said. 

Global markets

Equities in other Asian markets strengthened, shrugging off a weak session on Wall Street, with MSCI's broadest index of Asia Pacific shares outside Japan rising 0.8 per cent at the last count. Japan's Nikkei 225 was up 0.7 per cent, China's Shanghai Composite up 0.4 per cent and Hong Kong's Hang Seng up 0.5 per cent.

S&P 500 futures were up half a per cent. On Thursday, the three main US indices finished 1-1.5 per cent lower following the release of jobs data, which dashed hopes that the Fed could pause its current cycle of tightening monetary policy anytime soon as it continues to battle red-hot inflation.

Catch all the updates here. For all other news related to business, politics, tech, sports, auto and others visit Zeebiz.com.