Nifty hovers near 8,550; oil shares rebound

Markets continued to trade firm in late morning deals helped by a rebound in oil and gas shares along with shares of private banks and IT major Wipro.

At 11:35AM, the 30-share Sensex was up 132 points at 28,253 and the 50-share Nifty was up 35 points at 8,549.

The Indian rupee shed some of its early gains but was still trading higher at 61.73 to the US dollar compared to the previous close of 61.86 tracking gains in equities.

Further, foreign institutional investors were net buyers in Indian equities worth Rs 1,100 crore on Friday, as per provisional stock exchange data.

Asian markets were trading mixed with Chinese stocks witnessing a sell-off led by brokerages' shares after the China's securities regulator last week imposed a ban on three brokerages from opening new margin trading accounts for clients for three months. The Shanghai Composite slumped 7% while Hang Seng slipped 1.3%. However, stocks in Japan were trading firm and the benchmark Nikkei was up 0.9% while Straits Times gained 0.3%.

All the 12 sectoral indices were trading in the green led by Consumer Durables index up 2.7% followed by Oil and Gas, Capital Goods, Bankex and Healthcare indices among others.

Oil and gas shares rebounded with Reliance Industries up over 1% after a weak opening after reporting 4.5% drop in its consolidated net profit for the quarter ended December 2014. Further, reports suggest it will commission all of its 1400 fuel retail outlets in a year's time and plans to replicate the success of 2006 in the fuel retail segment. GAIL was up nearly 5% while ONGC rose 1%.

Wipro was up over 6% leading the gains on the Sensex after the IT major reported higher dollar revenue growth compared to its peers. Wipro managed to inch closer to the upper end of its earlier forecast in constant currency terms, posting 3.7% growth at $1,836.2 million.

Shares of private banks were among the top gainers on hopes that credit growth would pick up post the rate cut by the RBI. HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank up over 1% each while Axis Bank was up 2.3% after it reported an 18% rise in net profit in the October-December quarter, on the back of higher other income and net interest income.

Capital goods shares also firmed up on hopes of order inflows from power generators. L&T and BHEL were both up over 1% each.

In the pharma segment, Sun Pharma, Cipla and Dr Reddy's Labs were up 1-1.7% each.

Hindustan Unilever which was the top Sensex gainer last week rising 9% was down over 1% ahead of its Oct-Dec earnings to be announced later today.

Among other shares, Shares of SpiceJet is locked in upper circuit for second straight day, up 10% at Rs 22.55, also its 52-week high on BSE, after Kalanithi Maran and his associates had decided to transfer the ownership and management control of the airline to former promoter Ajay Singh and a clutch of investors.

In the broader market, BSE Mid-cap and Small-cap indices were up 0.7-0.9% each.

Market breadth was positive with 1,613 gainers and 912 losers on the BSE.