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After a sluggish start benchmark shares indices staged a recovery tracking gains in Asia with financial shares leading the gains on the back of higher GDP growth forecast for the last two quarters of the current fiscal and the proposed capital infusion in public sector banks.
At 11:30AM, the 30-share Sensex was up 154 points at 20,618 and the Nifty was up 48 points at 6,121.
The Finance Minister in the interim budget yesterday made a provision of Rs 11,200 crore for infusing capital in public sector banks and also forecasted GDP growth rate of atleast 5.2% in the last two quarters of the current fiscal.
The rupee is trading lower at 62.10 vs previous close of 61.84, tracking negative regional stocks and FX cues. US markets were closed on Monday, so pent-up dollar demand will come up, say dealers.
Asian markets with the exception of China recovered from their early lows to trade in positive terrain. Japan's benchmark Nikkei surged nearly 3% after the Bank of Japan maintained its expansionary monetary policy on Tuesday and maintained that the economy is recovering moderately. The Hang Seng was trading flat with a positive bias while Straits Times was slightly down. Meanwhile, China's Shanghai Composite was down 0.5% after its central bank said that it would pull out funds from the money market.
The BSE Bankex was the top gainer among the sectoral indices up 1.9% followed by Metal, Capital Goods, Auto and Healthcare among others. Consumer Durables index was the sole loser down 0.3%.
ICICI Bank, HDFC, HDFC Bank, SBI and Axis Bank were among the top Sensex gainers up 2-2.5%
each.
Other Sensex gainers include, Infosys, Tata Motors, L&T, HUL and TCS.
ITC was marginally down on profit taking after gains yesterday. Bharti Airtel was down nearly 1% post the acquisition of Loop Mobile for approximately Rs 700 crore.
Among other shares, V-Mart Retail is trading higher by 2% at Rs 286, after institutional investors acquired 1.74 million shares representing nearly 10% stake in the company for Rs 52 crore through open market on Monday.
In the broader market, the BSE Mid-cap and Small-cap indices were up 0.5-0.6%.
Market breadth was strong with 1,172 gainers and 713 losers on the BSE.
