The S&P BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty 50 indexes came off intraday highs, but held on to gains, in noon deals as investors booked profits in information technology and FMCG shares. While buying in metal and banking stocks provided support to the markets. The benchmarks staged a gap up opening wherein the Sensex rose as much as 384 points to hit an intraday high of 48,558 and Nifty 50 index touched an intraday high of 14,256.25. Domestic markets mirrored gains in other Asian markets in anticipation of a big borrowing and big spending by Democrat administration driving growth, following runoff elections that gave the party control of both houses of US Congress.
As of 12:52 pm, the Sensex was up 194 points at 48,367.82 and Nifty 50 index advanced 65 points to 14,211.
Eight of 11 sector gauges compiled by the National Stock Exchange were trading higher led by the Nifty Metal index's 3.5 per cent gain. Banking, realty, financial services and auto shares were also witnessing strong buying interest.
On the other hand, FMCG, IT and pharma shares were witnessing selling pressure on account of profit booking.
Mid- and small-cap shares were outperforming their larger peers as Nifty Midcap 100 and Nifty Smallcap 100 indexes climbed over 1 per cent each.
Among the individual shares, Dixon Technologies - rose as much as 5.2 per cent to hit another record high of Rs 15,214.20 on the BSE after the company, post market hours on Wednesday, said that it signed an agreement with Imagine Marketing, the maker of popular boAt wearable gadgets for manufacturing of twin wireless speakers.
Sobha rose as much as 7 per cent to hit an intra-day high of Rs 439.70 on the BSE after the company, post market hours on Thursday, said that it achieved best ever quarterly sales volume in December quarter.
Tata Steel was top Nifty gainer, the stock rose 5 per cent to Rs 720. Bharti Airtel, Hindalco, Adani Ports, IndusInd Bank, Axis Bank, UPL, HDFC and JSW Steel also rose between 2-5 per cent.
On the flipside, Titan, Divi's Labs, Hindustan Unilever, Nestle India, Infosys, Hero MotoCorp, ITC, HDFC Life, TCS and HCL Technologies were among the losers.
The overall market breadth was extremely positive as 2,009 shares were advancing while 893 were declining on the BSE.
