Sensex rises over 150 points, Nifty tops 17,650; Mirza International, HDFC Life & Raymond jump up to 8%

Indian equity benchmarks rose in Monday's opening trade extending their climb for the second straight session. The domestic indices traded higher today in early deals led by strong buying interest in banks, financials and energy stocks. However, weakness in pharma, metal and technology stocks capped some gains. The 30-share BSE Sensex surged 176 points or 0.30 per cent to trade at 59,831, while the broader NSE Nifty moved 43 points or 0.25 per cent higher to trade at 17,668. Mid- and small-cap shares were mixed as Nifty Midcap 100 shed 0.04 per cent and small-cap was up 0.19 per cent.

Improved quarterly results from index heavyweights Reliance Industries and ICICI Bank eased some concerns over a lacklustre start to the Q4 earnings season. Reliance reported 19 per cent growth in Q4, helped by the strong performance in the oil-to-chemicals (O2C) segment. ICICI Bank recorded a 30 per cent jump in net profit in the March quarter, helped by improved net interest income (NII) and loan growth.

"Three factors have the potential to facilitate this breakout: one, excellent Q4 results from ICICI Bank, two, better-than-expected Q4 results from Reliance and three, RBI's approval for the merger of HDFC in HDFC Bank - granting some of their important requests - thereby facilitating the merger by July. These four stocks accounting for 33.20 per cent weightage in Nifty will impart resilience to the market," said VK Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Financial Services.

On the flip side, foreign institutional investors (FIIs) extended their selling streak for five straight sessions on Friday, offloading Rs 2,117 crore of shares.

Seven out of the 15 sector gauges -- compiled by the National Stock Exchange -- were trading in the green. Sub-indexes Nifty Bank, Nifty Financial Services and Nifty Oil & Gas were outperforming the NSE platform by rising as much as 0.50 per cent, 0.80 per cent and 0.44 per cent, respectively.

On the stock-specific front, HDFC Life was the top Nifty gainer as the stock jumped 6.81 per cent to trade at Rs 548.25. Also, ICICI Bank, Tata Consumer Products, Apollo Hospitals and SBI rose up to 2.18 per cent.

In contrast, Sun Pharma, Dr Reddy's, Maruti, Eicher Motors and Asian Paints slipped up to 1.98 per cent.

The overall market breadth was strong as 1,674 shares were advancing while 1,044 were declining on BSE.

On the 30-share BSE index, ICICI Bank, Reliance, SBI, HDFC twins (HDFC and HDFC Bank), Titan, Wipro, NTPC, IndusInd Bank and HCL Tech were among the top gainers.

In addition, Mirza International and Raymond jumped up to 8.21 per cent.

On the flip side, ITC, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Sun Pharma, Infosys and Hindustan Unilever (HUL) were trading in the red.

Sensex had added 65 points, or 0.11 per cent, to settle at 59,632.35 on Friday, while Nifty had closed merely 6 points, or 0.03 per cent, higher at 17,624.45.

Nifty outlook

"17,370/270 region appearing as a strong support. Meanwhile, the 17,600 vicinity has acted as a sticky pivot lately, which is also the reason why penetration of the same on Friday turned out to be brief. This suggests that Nifty may be allowed to rise to 17,740 or 17,830 before bears regroup. Alternatively, the inability to float above 17640 may also be taken as a weak signal, though slippage past 17,500 is not expected today," said Anand James, Chief Market Strategist at Geojit Financial Services.