Sensex Rises 288 Points, Nifty Settles Above 11,500 Led By Pharma Stocks

The S&P BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty 50 indexes ended higher in trade on Tuesday led by gains in HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Reliance Industries, HDFC, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Infosys and Axis Bank. The benchmarks staged a gap up opening and were trading in a rangebound fashion in the first half of the trading session. However, buying in banking shares in noon deals helped benchmarks give a break out on the upside. The Sensex rose as much as 322 points and Nifty touched an intraday high of 11,534.55.

The Sensex ended 0.74 per cent or 288 points higher at 39,044 and Nifty 50 index climbed 82 points or 0.71 per cent to close at 11,522.

All the 19 sector gauges compiled by BSE, barring the index of real estate shares, ended higher led by the S&P BSE Healthcare index's over 2 per cent gain. Banking, financial services, telecom, power and oil & gas shares also witnessed buying interest.

Mid- and small-cap shares outperformed their larger peers for second day in a row after market regulator SEBI said on Friday that multi-cap funds should invest a minimum 75 per cent of their assets in stocks and mandated equal allocation of 25 per cent between large-, mid- and small-cap shares. Nifty Midcap 100 and Nifty Smallcap 100 indexes rose over a per cent each.

IndusInd Bank was top Nifty gainer, the stock rose nearly 5 per cent to close at Rs 638. Cipla, UPL, Axis Bank, Bharti Airtel, ICICI Bank, Sun Pharma, Bajaj Finance and Dr Reddy's Labs also rose between 2-3 per cent.

On the flipside, Titan, Maruti Suzuki, HDFC Life, Eicher Motors, ITC, BPCL, Asian Paints, Coal India, Bajaj Auto, Indian Oil, HCL Technologies and Wipro fell between 0.2-1 per cent each.

The overall market breadth was positive as 1,586 shares closed higher while 1,162 ended lower on the BSE.