Sensex Jumps Over 250 Points, Nifty Hits 10,870

Domestic stock markets started Friday's session on a strong note tracking gains in Asian peers, a day after official data showed India's GDP grew at the slowest pace in over a year. The Sensex jumped as much as 273.23 points to 36,140.67 during the session, while the Nifty moved to 10,871.60, up 79.1 points from the previous close. All sectors moved higher led by advances in banking, financial services and metal stocks. At 11:32 am, the Sensex traded 177.01 points - or 0.49 per cent - higher at 36,044.45 and the Nifty at 10,847.35, up 54.85 points from the previous close. 

Top gainers on the 50-scrip benchmark index at the time were Adani Ports, Vedanta, IndusInd Bank, Indiabulls Housing Finance and Yes Bank, trading between 1.86 per cent and 2.29 per cent higher.

The domestic markets shrugged off the release of weak macroeconomic data on Thursday evening. India's GDP or gross domestic product growth stood at 6.6 per cent in the quarter ended December 31, 2018, the slowest rate of expansion recorded since the quarter ended September 2017. 

According to analysts, easing of geopolitical concerns supported the markets. 

"Concerns pertaining to the India-Pakistan tensions have subsided to some extent now... Gains are selective, primarily the top 100 stocks are performing well," news agency Reuters quoted Saurabh Jain, AVP Rsearch, SMC Global Securities, as saying. 

Equities in other Asian markets rose driven by Chinese markets, which rallied with the blue-chip CSI300 index adding 1.2 per cent. Index publisher MSCI said it would quadruple the weighting of mainland shares in its global benchmarks later this year, potentially drawing more than $80 billion of fresh foreign inflows to the world's second-biggest economy. 

That, along with strength in other markets in the region, helped push MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan up more than 0.3 per cent.

(With agency inputs)