 "Markets have a muted morning; Nifty hovers at 8,250")
At 11.30am, the Sensex was at 27,259, up 53 points and the Nifty was hovering around its technically crucial level of 8,243, up 19 points.
Continuing their outperformance from the previous session, the BSE midcap and small cap indices have gained around half a percent each at 10,567 and 11,054 respectively.
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The BSE Sensex has been confined to a trading range of around 200 points between an intra-day high of 27,379 and a low of 27,159 thus far, after swinging in a range of more than 300 points on Thursday.
Among key corporate earnings, JSW Steel, Nestle India and Tata Coffee are scheduled to announce their quarter ended 31 March 2015 earnings on today, 15 May 2015.
RUPEE
Rising for the third straight day, the rupee strengthened by 18 paise to 63.47 against the US dollar in early trade on continued selling of the dollar by banks and exporters.
Forex dealers said that besides the sustained selling, dollar's weakness against other currencies overseas, coupled with a higher opening in the domestic equity market, propped up the rupee at the Interbank Foreign Exchange.
SECTORS & STOCKS
The rate-sensitive sectors, mainly banking and auto, are leading gains this morning as the further softening in retail inflation to a four-month low of 4.87% in April has given rise to hopes of a rate-cut by the RBI.
In the banking space, SBI and Axis Bank have gained more than 1% each to top the gainer's list on the BSE. Yes Bank and Kotak Mahindra Bank have also added 1-2% each. HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank have, however, edged lower.
In the auto space, M&M and Tata Motors have gained about 1% each; Maruti Suzuki, Bajaj Auto and Hero MotoCorp are also marginally in the green, albeit off the highs of the day.
On the losing side, the metal index has lost around 1%. Tata Steel has plunged by almost 2% after the company announced a Rs 6,500-crore goodwill impairment charge for the loss of value of operations in Europe, Canada, and Mozambique in 2014-15. JSW Steel, Hindalco and Jindal Steel have also shed about 2% each.
The market breadth is positive, with 1316 advances as against 837 declines on the BSE.