Mid- and small-cap shares were also witnessing strong buying interest
The Indian equity benchmarks extended gains in afternoon trading led by gains in metal and auto counters like JSW Steel, Tata Steel, Hindalco, Vedanta, Tata Motors and Eicher Motors. The Sensex rose as much as 456 points and Nifty 50 index touched an intraday high of 14,984. The benchmarks opened higher and extended gains in noon trading ahead of weekly expiry of index futures and option contracts.
As of 2:05 pm, the Sensex was up 343 points at 50,005 and Nifty 50 index advanced 136 points to 14,954.
Buying was visible across the sectors as all the 11 sector gauges compiled by the National Stock Exchange were trading higher led by the Nifty Metal index’s 6 per cent gain. Nifty IT, Auto and Realty indexes also rose over 1 per cent each.
Mid- and small-cap shares were also witnessing strong buying interest as Nifty Midcap 100 index rose 1 per cent and Nifty Smallcap 100 index climbed 1.6 per cent.
On the primary market front, Macrotech Developers IPO was subscribed 29 per cent till 2:00 pm on second day of the issue.
JSW Steel was top Nifty gainer, the stock rose 11 per cent to Rs 625. Tata Steel, Shree Cements, Hindalco, Titan, Tech Mahindra, Tata Motors, UltraTech Cement, Britannia Industries, Larsen & Toubro, Coal India and Wipro also rose between 1-7 per cent.
On the flipside, Bajaj Auto, Bajaj Finance, SBI Life, Sun Pharma, NTPC, Power Grid, HDFC Bank and State Bank of India were among the losers.
The overall market breadth was positive as 1,881 shares were advancing while 930 were declining on the BSE.