After a lacklustre trading for most part of the day markets rebounded in late trades to end higher on Wednesday led by auto and financial shares.
The 30-share Sensex provisionally ended up 68 points at 18,499 and the 50-share Nifty ended up 17 points at 5,615.
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(Updated at 14:31 hrs)
Markets firmed up in late noon trades on Wednesday led by gains in financials and auto shares.
At 2:30PM, the Sensex was up 59 points at 18,490 and the Nifty was up 15 points at 5,613.
In Asia, Japan's Nikkei share average advanced on Wednesday as investors took comfort that some firms, such as Hitachi Ltd and Komatsu Ltd, did not cut their full-year earnings guidance as feared. The Nikkei rose 1% to end at 8,928. The Hang Seng was up 1% while the Shanghai Composite and Straits Times were marginally up.
European shares were trading higher in early trades today amid encouraging earnings from Germany's airline major Lufthansa. The FTSE-100 was up 0.2% while the CAC-40 and DAX were both up 0.6% each.
Among the sectoral indices on the BSE, Health Care, Auto and Realty indices were up 1-1.4% followed by IT, Bankex and Metal indices. FMCG, Oil and Gas and Capital Goods indices were among the top losers.
Financials firmed up after profit taking on Tuesday after the RBI disappointed the street by keeping key policy rates unchanged. HDFC, SBI, ICICI Bank were up 0.3-1.3% each.
In the auto segment, Maruti Suzuki was up 2.9% at Rs 1,435, extending its previous day’s 2% gain on reporting a better-than-expected net profit of Rs 227 crore for the second quarter as against analyst estimate of Rs 175 crore due to mark-to-market gain of Rs 43 crore on commodities. Tata Motors, Mahindra & Mahindra, Hero MotoCorp and Bajaj Auto too gained 0.7-1.6%
Dr Reddy's Labs was up 2% at Rs 1,757, extending its previous day’s around 2% gain after reporting a better-than-expected 32% year-on-year (yoy) jump in net profit at Rs 407 crore in September 2012 quarter on back of strong performance by its pharmaceutical-services and U.S. generic-drugs businesses.
FMCG majors were among the top Sensex losers on profit taking after recent gains. Hindustan Unilever was down 1.5% and ITC was down 0.6%. Among capital goods shares, L&T was down 0.6% at Rs 1,627.
Exploration major ONGC was down 2.2% at Rs 267 on concerns of deepwater well leakage in Krishna Godavari (KG) basin for last two months could delay hydrocarbon production. Meanwhile, Credit Suisse downgraded state-run explorer to 'underperform' from 'neutral', citing rising risks to earnings in fiscal 2012-13, despite noting the stock continues to trade as a discount to global peers, the Reuters report suggests.
Among other shares,TV Today Network has soared 6% to Rs 77.30 on reports that the Aditya Birla group may buy a majority 51% stake in its holding company Living Media.
In the broader markets, the BSE Mid-cap and Small-cap indices were marginally up 0.3-0.7%.
The market breadth turned positive. 1349 stocks gained while 1294 stocks declined on the BSE.