Sensex recovers as Infosys revenue guidance lifts street

MUMBAI (Reuters) - India's stock markets staged a turnaround on Thursday to trade with modest gains, led by better-than-expected results from IT heavyweight Infosys propping the indexes towards a second consecutive day of gains.

Infosys gained as much as 6.5 percent after the company raised its full-year revenue guidance and beat analysts' estimates for its consolidated net profit in the third quarter.

Earlier in the session Indian shares fell over 1.5 percent following steep losses on Wall Street as worries over record low oil prices heightened fears about the global economy.

"Looking at yesterday and today's recovery from the lows, my sense is that we are somewhere close to the bottom," said Gaurang Shah, vice president at Geojit BNP Paribas.

 

"My advice would be to avoid the small and mid-cap stocks right now because their valuations have run up to a great extent."

The broader Nifty was trading 0.42 percent higher after falling as much as 1.57 percent earlier in the day.

The benchmark Sensex was trading 0.52 percent higher after falling as much as 1.53 percent earlier.

Propped by Infosys, other IT stocks such as Tech Mahindra and HCL Tech were up between 1 percent and 2 percent.

TCS , which fell 2 percent on Wednesday, was up 0.3 percent.

Tata Steel was down 2.4 percent after Standard & Poor's downgraded its corporate credit rating.

(Reporting by Karen Rebelo in Mumbai; Editing by Anand Basu)