Sensex, Nifty rebound; banks, oil & gas, FMCG lead

The BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty recouped entire losses led by buying interest in banks, oil & gas and FMCG stocks. Even the rupee recovered from record low of 54.89 a dollar to 54.72 a dollar, but it was still down 25 paise as compared to previous close of 54.47 a dollar.

The BSE benchmark rose 36.55 points or 0.23% to 16,107.03 and the NSE benchmark gained 10.85 points or 0.22% at 4,881.05.

Now the market seemed to be priced in all negative news about eurozone, says experts.

Adrian Mowat, Chief Asian and emerging equity strategist at JPMorgan Chase & Co does acknowledge that globally, markets are pricing in a debt saddled Greece exiting the euro zone. Mowat sees global equities rallying once worries from the Euro area are addressed and reined in. “Right now is not the time to buy risk assets,” he adds.

European markets like France's CAC, Germany's DAX and Britain's FTSE were down 0.5-0.75% as German government bond yields hit record lows on Friday, the US dollar rose, bank crisis escalated in Spain and Fitch downgraded Greece.

Back home, index heavyweight and oil & gas producer Reliance Industries shot up 1.5% while its rival state-owned ONGC rose 0.87%.

Country's top lender State Bank of India rallied 3.6% after it has reported a better than expected net profit of Rs 4,050 crore for the fourth quarter of FY12 due to improved asset quality. Even its rivals ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank gained 1.4% and 0.9%, respectively. The Bank Nifty jumped over 1%.

FMCG majors ITC and HUL were up around 1%. Shares of M&M, NTPC, Sun Pharma, Sterlite Industries, DLF and GAIL moved up 1-2%.

However, the BSE Auto Index fell 1.4% as record low rupee seen raising the cost of imports, royalty payments. Tata Motors, Bajaj Auto and Maruti tanked 2-3%; Hero Motocorp was down 1.4%.

Infosys, Larsen & Toubro, BHEL, Bharti Airtel, Coal India, Tata Power and Hindalco were down 0.7-1.5%.

(With inputs from Reuters)