The Indian equity benchmarks extended gains in noon deals on Thursday ahead of monthly expiry of April futures and option contracts led by gains in index heavyweights like Reliance Industries, Infosys, Hindustan Unilever, ICICI Bank and Larsen & Toubro. The Sensex rose as much as 972 points and Nifty 50 index reclaimed its important psychological level of 17,300.
As of 2:54 pm, the Sensex was up 958 points at 57,778 and Nifty 50 index advanced 281 points to 17,320.
Meanwhile, most of the markets in Asia were also trading higher providing support to Indian equities. Asian shares logged moderate gains on Thursday after Wall Street stabilized following a sell-off in tech stocks the day before.
Tokyo's Nikkei 225 rose 1per cent to 26,642.88 after the Bank of Japan wrapped up a policy meeting with no major changes, maintaining its near-zero interest rate stance despite a sharp weakening of the yen against the dollar and rising costs for many imported commodities.
Back home, buying was visible across sectors as twelve of 15 sector gauges compiled by the National Stock Exchange were trading higher led by the Nifty FMCG index's over 2 per cent gain.
Nifty Oil & Gas, Consumer Durables, Healthcare, Private Bank, Pharma, IT, Financial Services and Bank indices also rose between 0.6-1 per cent.
On the other hand, media, and select realty and state-run banking shares were facing selling pressure.
Mid- and small-cap shares were underperforming their larger peers as Nifty Midcap 100 index rose 0.2 per cent while Nifty Smallcap 100 index fell 0.3 per cent.
Hindustan Unilever was top Nifty gainer, the stock rose 4.5 per cent to Rs 2,241 after its net profit rose 5 per cent to Rs 2,307 crore for the fourth quarter ended in March 2022 despite flat volume growth due to unprecedented inflation.
Moreover, HUL has now become Rs 50,000 crore turnover company and also the first pure FMCG firm to achieve this milestone. The company now has 16 brands with a turnover of Rs 1,000 crore each.
Asian Paints, UPL, HDFC Life, Larsen & Toubro, SBI Life, Infosys, ITC, Power Grid, Tata Consumer Products and Reliance Industries also rose between 1.8-3.5 per cent.
On the flipside, Bajaj Auto fell 2.2 per cent to Rs 3,820 after its profit declined by 2 per cent to Rs 1,526 crore in the fourth quarter ended on March 31, 2022, on account of lower sales in both domestic and export markets.
The company's total two-wheeler and commercial vehicle sales declined by 17 per cent to 9,76,651 units in the fourth quarter as compared with 11,69,664 units in the same period of 2020-21 fiscal.
Hindalco, ONGC, Mahindra & Mahindra, Adani Ports, Bharti Airtel and BPCL were among the losers.
The overall market breadth was neutral as 1,609 shares were advancing while 1,711 were declining on the BSE.
