Indian shares traded firm in early morning trades on Monday as investors maintained their buying spree in software companies amid hopes of robust earnings from Tata Consultancy Services later today after Infosys' upbeat third quarter performance last week.
Global brokerages such as JP Morgan, Barclays upgraded their ratings on the Infosys, India's second-biggest software services exporter which posted better-than-expected earnings and revenue guidance on Friday.
Rate-sensitive sectors such as Banks, real-estate, automobiles traded cautious ahead of key Inflation data scheduled later today which is likely to decide the Reserve Bank of India's monetary policy stance on January 29.
At 10 AM, the 30-share Sensex of the Bombay Stock Exchange gained 84.14 points and traded at 19,748.09 and the 50-share Nifty gained 17.95 points at 5,9969.20.
Asian markets traded mixed. Hong Kong's Hang Seng rose 0.66% to 23,418, Taiwan's Weighted index fell 0.6% to 7,868, Singapore's Straits Times was down 0.4% to 3,203 . China's Shanghai Composite jumped 1.8% to 2,284 while Japan's Nikkei was shut today.
Back home, autos, metal, real-estate, power, banks declined while IT, technology, consumer durables, oil & gas, FMCG indexes gained on BSE.
Among key Sensex stocks, Maruti Suzuki fell 1.6%, Mahindra and Mahindra & Hero MotoCorp dropped 1.3% and 0.1%, SBI fell 0.6%, Sterlite Industries and Tata Steel down 1% and 0.4% while Sun Pharma and Cipla fell 0.6% and 1% on BSE.
Among gainers, Infosys gained 4%, Wipro and TCS rose 0.4% and 1% , ONGC was up 1%, ICICI Bank rose 0.4%, Reliance Industries gained 0.3% on BSE.
The other key notable movers include Geojit BNP Paribas Financial Services which surged over 5% to Rs 27.40 after reporting over two-fold increase in the net profit at Rs 13 crore for the third quarter ended December 2012 (Q3) as against Rs 4.3 crore during the same quarter of the previous year.
The broader markets declined with mid-caps and small-caps falling 0.1% each on BSE.
The market breadth was positive. Out of 1,775 stocks traded, 869 stocks advanced compared to 831 declines on BSE.
