Indian stock market opens higher, Nifty above 24,700

Mumbai: Benchmark indices Sensex and Nifty rebounded in early trade on Friday driven by buying in blue-chip IT stocks and a firm trend in Asian equity markets. After a flat start to the trade, the 30-share BSE benchmark gauge Sensex later bounced back and climbed 219.05 points to 81,171.04. The NSE Nifty went up by 111.2 points to 24,720.90. Later, both the benchmark indices extended their rally. The BSE benchmark gauge quoted 411.60 points higher at 81,363.59, and the Nifty traded 145.15 points up at 24,755.75.

From the Sensex firms, Eternal, Infosys, HCL Tech, Power Grid, ITC, IndusInd Bank, Tech Mahindra and Nestle were among the biggest gainers. Sun Pharma and Mahindra & Mahindra were the laggards. In Asian markets, South Korea's Kospi, Japan's Nikkei 225 index, Shanghai's SSE Composite index and Hong Kong's Hang Seng were trading in the positive territory. US markets ended largely flat on Thursday. "After the 14 per cent pull back from the March lows the market is struggling to find direction. It appears that the sustained FII buying which played the important role in this rally has run out of steam. The big FII selling on 20th and 22nd of this month indicates that the FIIs may again turn sellers if the global environment turns unfavourable," VK Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist, Geojit Investments Limited, said. The silver lining from the market perspective is India’s strong macros particularly the resilient growth and declining inflation and interest rates, he said. "Even when the market turns weak domestic demand driven segments like financials, telecom, aviation etc are resilient and this is reflected in the strength in the stock prices of the big boys in these segments like ICICI Bank, Bharti Airtel and InterGlobe Aviation," Vijayakumar added. Global oil benchmark Brent crude dipped 0.59 per cent to USD 64.06 a barrel. Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) offloaded equities worth Rs 5,045.36 crore on Thursday, according to exchange data. The BSE Sensex tanked 644.64 points or 0.79 per cent to settle at 80,951.99 on Thursday. The Nifty tumbled 203.75 points or 0.82 per cent to 24,609.70.