Sensex up 360 points, Nifty shy of 11,000

The benchmark BSE Sensex was marching northwards at 36,439.50, up by 375.69 or 1.04 per cent while approaching the last half hour of trade on Tuesday, while Nifty50 was trading just shy of 11,000 level. The banking and auto sector stocks were boosting the uptrend in the market.

The Nifty50 was trading at 10,983.95, up by 120.45 points or 1.11 per cent. Among the top gainers on the index were Indiabulls Housing Finance, Tata Motors, Eicher Motors, HPCL and Axis Banks. While among the index losers were Tech Mahindra, Wipro, Infy, Zee Entertainment and Cipla.

If we look at the BSE Sensex the top gainers including Tata Motors, Axis Bank, ONGC, Hero Motors, Coal India and Tata Steel. Among the losers were HCL Tech, Powergrid, TCS, L&T, HUL, and Infy.

Index heavyweights HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and Axis Bank were among the top index contributors on Sensex, supported by ITC, Reliance and Tata Motors.

Sectorally, Nifty Bank was up close to 2 per cent at 27,564.50, up by 520.60 points, while Nifty Auto was up close to 3 per cent at 8,661.30, up by 247.65 points.

Banking stocks were upbeats on the expectation of positive policies for housing finance companies (HFCs). The National Housing Bank has proposed to increase the capital adequacy ratio for HFCs by 1 per cent per year in a graded manner till 2022. The capital adequacy ratio for HFCs is currently at 12 per cent. It has also proposed a graded reduction in the limit of overall borrowings to 12x the net owned fund (NoF) by 2022 from the current 16x.

The market cheered auto sales data wherein Tata Motors spiked as the company reported that in February Jaguar UK sales witnessing a growth of 33.4 per cent, while JLR UK sales were up 13.9 per cent, YoY. Also, Eicher Motors which was witnessing selling pressure for the past few weeks was trading up by 7.77 per cent on Tuesday.