Mkts northbound amid choppy trade; financials lead

At 11:51 hours IST, the benchmark indices were volatile in trade. Capital Goods, power, pharma, PSU banking and metal stocks along with Bharti and HDFC were witnessing buying interest. Reliance Industries was volatile.

However, selling in Infosys, ONGC, ITC, HUL, TCS, Sterlite, Hero Honda, Hindalco, Ambuja Cements, Idea and Unitech capped the gains.

The Sensex rose 55 points, to 14,714 and the Nifty gained 17 points at 4,365. The market breadth was mixed; about 561 shares advanced while 591 shares declined on the NSE.

In the capital goods space, Suzlon Energy, Alstom Projects, BHEL, L&T, Siemens and ABB were up 0.8-2%. In the power pack, Power Grid Corp, GVK Power, Tata Power, Lanco Infratech, NTPC, Reliance Infrastructure, Torrent Power and Reliance Power gained 1-2.9%.

Pharma stocks like Glenmark, Ranbaxy Labs, Biocon, Cipla, Sun Pharma, Dishman Pharma and Dr Reddys Labs went up 1-4%. In the banking space, Axis Bank, PNB, SBI, Bank of Baroda and Bank of India were up 1-2%. ICICI Bank was up 0.34%.

Stocks like Texmaco, Kalindee Rail Nirman, Hind Rectifiers, Simplex Castings, Stone India and Titagarh Wagons were up 2-5%, ahead of Railway budget.

On the next page - see how Indian markets performed in the last couple of hours