The benchmark Nifty continued to hold the 5500-mark today, supported by oil & gas, metal, capital goods, financial and select technology companies' shares. However, the selling in ITC, Wipro, HUL, Hero Honda, Reliance Infrastructure and Reliance Communications has capped the upside at 12:27 hours.
Fuel reforms and falling crude price are positive for India equities, says Nandan Chakraborty of ENAM.
Government has hiked diesel prices by Rs 3/litre, cooking gas by Rs 50/cylinder and kerosene by Rs 2/litre on Friday.
Government also removed customs duty on crude oil and customs duty on petroleum products by 5%. It cut down excise duty on diesel by Rs 2.6/litre. ONGC and BPCL rallied nearly 5% each.
However, crude oil prices were seeing correction since last week. NYMEX crude was trading at USD 90.02 a barrel, down over a percent. Brent crude fell USD 2.39 to USD 102.73 a barrel.
"We have revised our model portfolio, adding PSU banks and OMCs post the recent developments. We feel interest rates in India will peak out earlier than expected," Chakraborty said.
The 30-share BSE Sensex was trading at 18,381, up 141 points and the 50-share NSE Nifty rose 48 points to 5,519.
Heavyweights like HDFC, Bharti Airtel, L&T, HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank gained 1-2%. Reliance Industries, Infosys, TCS, SBI and BHEL went up about 0.5%.
GAIL, Power Grid Corp and SAIL were up 2-3%.
Market breadth was in favour of advances - about two shares advanced for every one share falling on National Stock Exchange.
The broader indices too were following the same trend - the BSE Midcap and Smallcap indices moved up 0.7% each.
Midcaps like Gujarat Flourochem shot up 12%. Videocon Industries, Bajaj Finserv, India Cements and Jubilant Life were up 4-8%. However, KGN Industries, Kirloskar Oil, AIA Engineering, Bhushan and Kwality Dairy slipped 2-4%.
