The Indian equity benchmarks staged a gap up opening on Wednesday led by gains in Infosys, Reliance Industries, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, HDFC, Tata Consultancy Services and Tech Mahindra amid strong global cues. The Sensex rose as much as 485 points and Nifty 50 index reclaimed its important psychological level of 17,400.
As of 9:24 am, the Sensex was up 471 points at 58,279 and Nifty 50 index advanced 103 points to 17,370.
Overnight, big tech gave major U.S. stock indexes a boost on Tuesday and European shares ended largely unchanged as a sharp fall in oil prices took the shine off bumper profits from oil company BP. Wall Street shares shook off a groggy start and early losses as Apple Inc, Microsoft Corp and Amazon.com Inc jumped. Shares of bank stocks including Bank of America Corp, JPMorgan Chase & Co and Wells Fargo added over 1 per cent each ahead of a U.S. inflation reading due this week.
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The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.06 per cent to end at 35,462.78 points. The S&P 500 gained 0.84 per cent to 4,521.52. The Nasdaq Composite climbed 1.28 per cent to 14,194.46, news agency Reuters reported.
Back home, buying was visible across the board as all the 15 sector gauges compiled by the National Stock Exchange were trading higher led by the Nifty IT index's 1.4 per cent gain. Nifty Media, Private Bank, Realty, Healthcare, Consumer Durables, Financial Services, Auto and Bank indices also rose between 0.7-1.5 per cent.
Mid- and small-cap shares were also witnessing buying interest as Nifty Midcap 100 and Nifty Smalllcap 100 indices rose nearly 1 per cent each.
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Indian Oil was top Nifty gainer, the stock rose 2.3 per cent to Rs 120. HCL Technologies, Bajaj Auto, Tech Mahindra, Titan, Hindalco, Maruti Suzuki, Divi's Labs, Wipro, Adani Ports and HDFC Bank also rose between 1.4-2.1 per cent.
On the flipside, NTPC was the only loser.
The overall market breadth was positive as 1,890 shares were advancing while 818 were declining on the BSE.
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