Bourses rebound amid rally in global markets, heavy buying in banking & finance stocks

Mumbai: Equity benchmarks Sensex and Nifty ratcheted higher on Friday, boosted by heavy buying in Infosys, banking and finance stocks amid a rally in global stock markets.

After soaring nearly 1,200 points intra-day, the 30-share BSE Sensex gave up some gains to close 684.64 points or 1.20 per cent higher at 57,919.97. Similarly, the broader NSE Nifty climbed 171.35 points or 1.01 per cent to end at 17,185.70.

Infosys topped the Sensex gainers' chart, spurting 3.82 per cent, a day after the country's second largest IT services firm posted a better-than-expected 11 per cent rise in consolidated net profit at Rs 6,021 crore for the September quarter and announced buyback of shares worth Rs 9,300 crore.

HDFC Bank, HDFC, HCL Technologies, Kotak Mahindra Bank, ICICI Bank, Larsen & Toubro and Bajaj Finance were among the other prominent winners. In contrast, Mahindra & Mahindra, Asian Paints, Reliance Industries, Wipro, Bharti Airtel, PowerGrid and Maruti featured among the laggards, shedding up to 1.40 per cent.

On a weekly basis, the Sensex shed 271.32 points or 0.46 per cent, while the Nifty fell 128.95 points or 0.74 per cent.

The broader market depicted a muted trend on Friday, with the BSE midcap gauge declining 0.13 per cent, while the smallcap index inched up 0.01 per cent.

Among BSE sectoral indices, IT jumped 1.72 per cent, bankex climbed 1.71 per cent, financial services 1.60 per cent and teck 1.56 per cent.

However, power declined 1.34 per cent, followed by (1.34 per cent), oil & gas (1 per cent) and realty (0.77 per cent).

International oil benchmark Brent crude was trading 0.81 per cent lower at $93.80 per barrel.

The rupee reversed intra-day losses and closed 5 paise higher at 82.19 against the US dollar on Friday.