The market breadth was in favour of the advances with 959 stocks advancing while 613 declined and 443 remained unchanged. On the other hand, in the BSE, 1232 stocks advanced and 732 declined and 94 remained unchanged.
The Indian benchmark indices were trading on a flat note on Thursday morning with the Nifty shedding 1 point at 10,492 while the Sensex was down 13 points.
The CNX Auto Index was up 0.34 percent led by stocks like Bajaj Auto which gained 1.5 percent followed by Ashok Leyland, Eicher Motors and Amara Raja Batteries.
Nifty Realty was also trading in the green led by Oberoi Realty which added 1.5 percent, Delta Corp 1.54 percent, Indiabulls Real Estate and Phoenix Mills.
Aurobindo Pharma from the pharma space added 1.3 percent as the index traded on a positive note.
From the Nifty the stocks which gained the most were Bajaj Auto, Aurobindo Pharma and Ambuja Cements, each adding over 1 percent followed by BPCL and Tata Steel.
The most active Nifty stocks included Fortis Healthcare which jumped 2.2 percent followed by PNB which was down 2 percent. Venkeys, Cholamandalam Investment and Tata Steel were the other active stocks.
The other top losers included Bharti Infratel, Infosys and Tech Mahindra each shedding 1 percent followed by ICICI Bank and Asian Paints.
ICICI Bank from the banking space fell over 1 percent after the bank said that the company has exposure to the Gitanjali Group.
The top Sensex gainers were Future Lifestyle which jumped over 4 percent followed by Dalmia Bharat, Bajaj Electricals and INOX Wind.
Ashok Leyland, Cholamandalam, Future Lifestyle, Ipca Labs and Venkys were some of the few stocks that hit new 52-week high on NSE while Gitanjali Gems Limited and Max India were the stocks that hit fresh 52-week low.
The market breadth was in favour of the advances with 959 stocks advancing while 613 declined and 443 remained unchanged. On the other hand, in the BSE, 1232 stocks advanced and 732 declined and 94 remained unchanged.
BofAML has Tata Steel and JSW Steel as the preferred picks from the steel space. It is of the view that domestic steel price recovery has more legs and expects one more price hike in March.
The house believes that rising steel spreads is likely to support further expansion in profitability in current quarter adding that margin expansion for Tata Steel may be higher on account of raw material integration.
