Sensex, Nifty Hold Gains; Larsen & Toubro, NTPC Top Gainers

The Indian equity benchmarks held on to gains and were trading near one-month highs in noon deals on Friday mirroring gains in global markets as signs of easing inflation with fall in commodity prices ignited hopes of slower pace of rate hikes going ahead, analysts said. The Sensex rose as much as 449 points and Nifty 50 index touched an intraday high of 16,275. Most of the Asian markets were trading higher taking cues from an overnight rally on Wall Street. Japan's Nikkei rose 1.42 per cent, Hong Kong's Hang Seng advanced 0.64 per cent, South Korea's KOSPI climbed 1.15 per cent and Taiwan Weighted rose 1.36 per cent.

Stocks on Wall Street rallied again Thursday, extending the market’s winning streak to a fourth day and placing the major indexes on pace for weekly gains.

The S&P 500 rose 1.5 per cent. It’s latest gain marks the longest winning streak for the benchmark index since March. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.1 per cent, while the Nasdaq closed 2.3 per cent higher.

Back home, as of 12:28 pm, the Sensex was up 231 points at 54,409 and Nifty 50 index climbed 61 points to 16,194.

Buying was visible across the board as all the 15 sector gauges compiled by the National Stock Exchange, barring the measure of real estate shares, were trading higher led by the Nifty Media index's nearly 2 per cent gain. Nifty Bank, Private Bank, Financial Services, Auto, IT, Consumer Durable and Oil & Gas indices also rose around 0.5 per cent.

Broader markets were also witnessing buying interest as Nifty Midcap 100 index advanced 0.44 per cent and Nifty Smallcap 100 index rose 0.85 per cent.

Mahindra & Mahindra was among the top Nifty gainers, the stock rose as much as 5.2 per cent to hit fresh 52-week high of Rs 1,191.90 after it informed exchanges that British International Investment (BII) will invest Rs 1,925 crore in its four-wheel passenger electric vehicles business.

Larsen & Toubro, Coal India, Grasim Industries, Axis Bank, NTPC, Shree Cements, UPL, Ultratech Cement, Tech Mahindra and ICICI Bank were also among the gainers.

On the flipside, Asian Paints, Maruti Suzuki, Eicher Motors, IndusInd Bank, Tata Steel, Bajaj Finance and JSW Steel were among the losers.

The overall market breadth was positive as 1,873 shares were advancing while 736 were declining on the BSE.