After touching a low of 17,432 in early trades, the Sensex recovered some of its lost ground owing to the increasing strength in financials and supportive Asian markets. At 11:50 am, the Sensex gained 61 points at 17,460 and the Nifty added 18 points at 5,298.
In the broader markets, the midcap and the smallcap indices which gained 0.5% was almost in line with the Sensex up 0.4%.
All the Asian markets were trading in the green on hopes of a stimulus from the Federal Reserve. The ones leading the gains were Hang Seng, Jakarta Composite, Straits Times and Taiwan Weighted up 1% each.
Back home, among the sectoral indices, Consumer Durables, Realty and Bankex indices were the top gainers, up 1% each. Meanwhile, IT and FMCG indices remained in the negative territory, down 0.6% and 0.2%, respectively.
IT index was down 0.6% as rupee rose to its strongest level in nearly a month against the Dollar. TCS down 1.6% and Infosys down 0.7% were the major losers.
FMCG index stayed in the negative zone for the second consecutive day on concerns that weak monsoon so far may give rise to commodity inflation leading to higher input costs. HUL and ITC down 0.9% and 0.4% were the notable losers.
Shares of telecom service providers were in limelight on the bourses ahead of the Cabinet meeting today to consider a fresh proposal on prospective spectrum pricing. Among individual stocks, Bharti Airtel and Idea Cellular soared 4% each, followed by Reliance Communications up 2.5% on back of huge volumes.
The top gainers among the Sensex stocks were Gail India, ICICI Bank, Hindalco, L&T, Dr Reddys Lab, ONGC and HDFC up 1-2%. Maruti Suzuki extended gains and was up 1.3% after the company Monday said it has registered 20% jump in June sales.
On the losing side were BHEL down 1% along with Sun Pharma, Hero MotoCorp and Tata Motors down 0.2% each.
Among other stocks, TTK Prestige was trading higher by 3% at Rs 3,244 after the company said it has reported a healthy 29% year-on-year (y-o-y) growth in sales for the first quarter ended June 2012 (Q1).
Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) was up 4% at Rs 24.80 after the state-owned telecom service provider said that it has received Rs 152.5 crore refunds from the Income Tax (IT) department.
Godrej Properties gained 5% to Rs 547 after the real estate arm of the Godrej group, said that it has created an Rs 770-crore development fund with a clutch of global investors, including Dutch pension services provider APG and Sparinvest Property Fund II, to develop residential properties in India.
MOIL Limited rose 3% at Rs 286 after the company said it has increased prices of different grades of manganese ore in the range of 12.5 - 15% for the July - September 2012 quarter.
The market breadth was positive as 1452 stocks advanced as against 863 declines on the BSE.
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