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Markets continued to trade firm in early trades, amid positive Asia cues, with private banks leading the gains.
At 9:30AM, the 30-share Sensex was up 35 points at 21,240 and the 50-share Nifty was up 9 points at 6,313.
The rupee firmed up against the US dollar in early trades and was up at Rs 61.47 compared with the previous close of 61.62.
Asian markets firm up on Tuesday as Japanese stocks rebounded and Chinese money rates eased, while the US dollar got a fillip from a report the Federal Reserve would again trim its bond buying next week. The dollar broke the early lethargy with a hop to 104.48 yen when the Wall Street Journal reported the Fed is on track to trim its bond-buying program for the second time in six weeks, paring back by $10 billion to $65 billion a month. The Nikkei was up 1.5% while Shanghai Composite and Hang Seng were up over 0.5% each and Straits Times rose 0.3%.
The BSE Metal index was the top gainer among the sectoral indices followed by Bankex and Capital Goods.
Shares of private banks were among the top gainers with ICICI Bank, Axis Bank and HDFC Bank up 0.7-1% each.
Reliance Industries was marginally after the company said it plans to start production of natural gas from coal seams, called coal-bed methane (CBM), in Madhya Pradesh from 2015-16.
Other Sensex gainers include, ITC, L&T and SBI among others.
Meanwhile, IT shares which had gained over the past few sesssion witnessed profit taking. Infosys and TCS were down 0.3-0.4% each.
Among other shares, Asian Paints was down 3% after lower volume growth, higher employee expenses and input cost inflation, with a marginally higher tax rate, pulled down Asian Paints’ results for the December 2013 quarter. Consolidated net sales of Rs 3,413 crore and net profit of Rs 329 crore were lower than Bloomberg consensus estimates of Rs 3,487 crore and Rs 381 crore, respectively.
Hindustan Zinc was up 4% after the government on Monday paved way for sale of its 29.5 per cent residual stake in Hindustan Zinc Ltd (HZL), the world's second-largest zinc producer that is controlled by Anil Agarwal's Vedanta Group. Sesa Sterlite was up 3%.
In the broader market, the BSE Mid-cap and Small-cap index were up over 0.4% each.
Market breadth was strong with 766 gainer and 346 losers on the BSE.
