Indian equities continue to maintain upbeat sentiment on Monday due to encouraging US economic data while on the domestic front, BJP victories in the assemblies of Haryana and Maharashtra. Meanwhile, the government announced slew of reform measures such as diesel price deregulation and hike in natural gas price hike.
At 1.29 p.m., the Sensex was trading up 286.40 points or 1.10% at 26,394.93 with 23 components gaining. Meanwhile, the Nifty was trading higher by 92.55 points or 1.19% at 7,872.25 with 41 components gaining.
The Oil & Gas index climbed the most with a gain of 1.93% followed by Capital Goods (1.82%). On the other hand IT dropped by 0.63%. ONGC, Hindalco, Axis Bank and Tata Motors were major gainers in the Sensex pack. On the other hand, Wipro, Infosys, Reliance Industries and TCS were the top losers in the benchmark index.
The BSE Mid and small caps underperformed their larger counterparts gaining 0.99% and 0.79% respectively. Overall market breadth was positive with 1,650 advances against 1,000 declines.
Shares of Hindustan Construction Company, Axis Bank and JSPL are active in day's trade. Shares of HCC witnessed a sharp rise of 5.79% today after the company bagged an order worth Rs 3.93 billion road projects by the Ministry of Road Transport & Highway.
Shares of Axis Bank witnessed a sharp rise of 3.50% after the bank reported growth of 18.23% in its net profit for the quarter ended Sept. 30, 2014. The bank earned a profit of Rs 16.11 billion for the quarter ended Sept. 30, 2014. The bank's quarterly income totalled at Rs 105.5 billion, an increase of 12.53% over Rs 93.75 billion in the same period a year ago.
Whereas shares of JSPL registered a sharp fall of 7.36% after CBI has registered a fresh case of alleged cheating and corruption against the company among others in connection with its probe into coal blocks allocation.