Mid-day Mood | Market off day's high but sustain gains; IT, banks, pharma stand strong

The market opened with marginal gains and has extended its gains since then.

The market snapped a three-day losing streak and extended its early gains by afternoon on August 4. The rebound in the market was triggered by gains across most frontline sectors  like banks, information technology and pharma.

The much-needed recovery comes after the market faced intense selling in the past three sessions on the back of a meltdown across global markets following a surprise downgrade of US credit ratings by Fitch.

At 1.55 pm, the Sensex was up 350.52 points or 0.54 percent at 65,591.20, and the Nifty was up 105.10 points or 0.54 percent at 19,486.80. Analysts pegged strong support for the Nifty around 19,200, while on the upside, 19,550 is expected to present immediate resistance to an up-move.

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The advance-to-decline ratio also tilted in favour of advances as about 1,993 shares rose, 1,111 fell, and 127 shares unchanged. This suggests that around two stocks climbed for each one that fell. Among sectors, the Nifty IT index remained resilient with 1.5 percent gains while Nifty Bank pared some of its early morning rally and was now trading 0.5 percent higher.

On the other hand, Nifty PSU Bank slipped into losses and was down 0.6 percent. The fall in PSU banks came largely on the back of losses in State Bank of India after the lender's slippages climbed sharply higher along with a contraction in net interest margin on a sequential basis in Q1. Following the results, shares of SBI fell over 2 percent, which weighed on the Nifty Bank as well as Nifty PSU Bank indices.

Among other specific stocks, drugmaker Cipla shot to a record high, up over 4 percent following reports that private equity firm Blackstone was eyeing a complete buyout of the promoter's stake.

Zomato was another stock in the spotlight as it jumped around 14 percent and touched the three-digit mark after recording its first ever net profit in the June quarter. Automobile major Eicher Motors was also up after it reported its best ever quarterly performance in Q1.

Moving in tandem with the headline indices, the Nifty Smallcap 100 and Nifty Midcap 100 were also trading with gains of around 1 percent.

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