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The markets have extended the early gains, thanks to the continuing strength on the Coal India and RIL counters.
At 12:15 PM, the Sensex was up 200 points at 28,720 and the Nifty was comfortably placed above the 8,700 mark at 8,725, up 54 points.
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(Updated at 11.30am)
The stock markets are having a steady session of trade after a bout of volatility witnessed in the previous session post the RBI policy.
The Sensex has been trading in a range of a little more than 100 points between an intra-day high of 28,687 and a low of 28,566 thus far.
At 11:30AM, the 30-share Sensex was up 134 points at 28,650 and the 50-share Nifty was hovering around the technically important level of 8,700 at 8701, up 41 points.
The broader market universe is continuing it outperformance vis-a-vis the benchmark indices. The midcap and smallcap indices is up about a per cent each at 11,044 and 11,585 as against the Sensex's gains of about 0.4%. In fact, the BSE small-cap index hit a seven-year high of 11,610 points, its highest level since January 2008, midway through the session before retracing marginally to current levels.
"The Nifty needs to hold above 8620 zone to continue this up move towards 8720 zones. While if it fails to hold 8575 levels then momentum may fizzle out and bears may drag it to 8500 levels. Traders need to trade cautiously ahead of the fourth quarterly corporate result session," Anand Rathi Securities said in a technical note.
Meanwhile, foreign institutional investors were net buyers in equities to the tune of Rs 144 crore on Tuesday, as per provisional stock exchange data.
The Indian rupee was trading lower at 62.34 compared to the previous close of 62.26 to the US dollar.
SECTORS & STOCKS
Coal India has spurted by more than 5 per cent to top the gainers list on the BSE as the Coal Ministry has removed the cap on the company's e-auction sales, in a move that is likely to boost the miner's bottomline in the foreseeable future. The coal ministry allowed the company to revert to the old system, removing the cap on e-auction volumes with effect from April 2015.
All sectoral indices are in the green, with the exception of the banking space. Oil, metal and Information technology are seeing the maximum buying interest.
In the BSE oil space, the index bellweather RIL has spurted by 0.6% at Rs 854. The oil marketing companies are also on the traders radar, with BPCL jumping vaulting by 4.1% at Rs 829, HPCL jumping by 2.7% at Rs 660 and IOC gainiing 1.4% at Rs 377.
The BSE metal index's gains are largely driven by the runaway rally of 5% at Rs 379 in Coal India. Among other metal stocks, Tata Steel has strengthened by 0.8% at Rs 336 and Hindalco has gained 0.5% at Rs 137.
The banking index is subdued post the weakness seen on policy day. Private banking heavyweights such as ICICI Bank, Axis Bank and Yes Bank have edged lower by upto half a percent each; SBI and PNB have, however, bucked the trend to gain in the region of about half a percent each.
The realty index has, however, bounced back after losing more than 1% on Tuesday's trading sesion in wake of the status-quo policy announcement by the central bank. The immediate trigger for the upmove seems to be media reports that the Union government cleared amendments to the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Bill, 2013, paving the way for legislation on regulators for the sector. Housing Development & Infrastructure (HDIL), Unitech, Indiabulls Real Estate, Sobha, Delta Corp, Parsvnath Developers, Kolte - Patil Developers, DB Realty and Oberoi Realty were up 2%-8% on the National Stock Exchange (NSE).
GLOBAL MARKETS
Asian stocks are trading in the green after the Bank of Japan kept its massive monetary stimulus intact as expected. The Hang Seng and Nikkei have gained about a per cent each, while Taiwan and Straits Times have added about a per cent each. And Shanghai has spurted by more than 2%.
