RIL, bank stocks give Sensex 150-pt lift; Nifty tops 11,800

NEW DELHI: Indian indices started Thursday's trading session on an upbeat note, thanks to buying in index heavyweight Reliance Industries (RIL) and bank stocks.

Mild gains in rupee against the US dollar amid sustained inflows from foreign institutional investors lent support to the market sentiment.

Foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) bought Rs 1,038.58 crore worth of domestic stocks on Tuesday, data available with NSE suggested. DIIs were net buyers to the tune of Rs 37.22 crore, data suggested.

At around 9:30 am, BSE sensex was up 130.28 points or 0.33 per cent at 39,405.92. Its NSE counterpart Nifty rose 30.05 points or 0.25 per cent to 11,817.20.

"Going forward, we expect the index to sustain above the upper band of consolidation (11,800) and eventually head towards 12,100 in coming weeks, since it has overhauled the preceding seven session’s corrective decline (11,760 to 11,550) in just three trading sessions," said ICICIDirect in a note.

Among Nifty stocks, 39 advanced and 11 declined.

In the Sensex kitty of stocks, 13 traded higher while 17 in the red. RIL with gains of over 2 per cent was the best performing Sensex stock. The oil-to-telecom behemoth is slated to report its March quarter results later today.

Other stocks that logged significant gains were -- Tata Motors, Asian Paints, HDFC, Hero MotoCorp.

On the other hand, Vedanta was the biggest loser, shedding 1 per cent. Bharti Airtel, Tata Steel, Infosys, SBI and L&T too joined Vedanta on the loser side.

Index heavyweight RIL and HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and Axis Bank were the major contributors to the morning rally. Infosys was the biggest drag.

Nonetheless, BSE Midcap and BSE Smallcap started their day with tepid gains, rising 0.14 per cent and 0.04 per cent respectively.