Banking shares which were witnessing selling pressure in morning deals bounced back.
The Indian equity benchmarks moved higher in noon deals led by gains in information technology and auto heavyweights. However, the upside was capped for the benchmarks owing to weakness in HDFC Bank, HDFC, Bajaj Finance and Hindustan Unilever. The Sensex rose as much as 200 points and Nifty 50 index moved above its important psychological level of 15,350. Reliance Industries, Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, Kotak Mahindra Bank and ITC were among the top movers in the Sensex.
As of 12:09 pm, the Sensex was up 175 points at 51,193 and Nifty 50 index climbed 56 points to 15,357.
Banking shares which were witnessing selling pressure in morning deals bounced back from intraday low levels wherein the nifty Bank index advanced over 300 points from day’s lowest level.
Seven of 11 sector gauges compiled by the National Stock Exchange were trading higher led by the Nifty IT index’s 1.5 per cent gain. Auto, Metal, PSU Bank and energy shares were also witnessing buying interest.
On the other hand, financial services, media, pharma and realty indexes were witnessing selling pressure.
Mid- and small-cap shares were also witnessing uying interest as Nifty Midcap 100 index rose 0.5 per cent and Nifty Smallcap 100 index advanced 0.6 per cent.
Wipro was top Nifty gainer, the stock rose 2 per cent to Rs 538. Tata Motors, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Hero MotoCorp, Tata Consultancy Services, Bajaj Auto, UltraTech Cement, Tech Mahindra, JSW Steel and Axis Bank also rose between 1-1.7 per cent.
On the flipside, Bajaj Finance, Bajaj Finserv, Cipla, Hindustan Unilever, Dr Reddy’s Labs, HDFC Bank, Bharti Airtel and ONGC were among the losers.
The overall market breadth was positive as 1,714 shares were advancing while 1,233 were trading lower on the BSE.