Banks, IT stocks propel markets; Nifty reclaims 6,100 level

Markets rebounded tracking their Asian peers and overnight gains on Wall Street.

Markets rebounded today tracking their Asian peers and overnight gains on Wall Street with banks and IT majors lifting the Nifty above 6,100 levels in early trades.

At 9:30AM, the 30-share Sensex was up 120 points at 20,657 and the 50-share Nifty was up 36 points at 6,127

Asian stocks were trading higher on the back of encouraging manufacturing data from the US. The Nikkei was up 2%, Straits Times was up 0.6%, Hang Seng was up 0.7%. However, Shanghai Composite was down 0.9% on the back of weak economic data.

Stocks on Wall Street ended higher on Thursday after a preliminary survey showed that US factory output in February increased at its fastest pace in four year and new claims for unemployment insurance declined in the latest week. Jobless claims in the US fell by 3,000 to 336,000 in the week ended February 15, 2014.

Facebook shares surged to all-time highs post the acquisition of WhatsApp while Tesla shares also rose to fresh highs.

The Dow Jones gained 93 points to end at 16,133, the S&P 500 gained 11 points to close at 1,840 and the tech-laden Nasdaq ended up 29 points at 4,268.

European shares ended mixed on Thursday weighed down by discouraging economic data from the euro zone and China.

The DAX ended down 0.4% at 9,619 and CAC-40 gained 0.3% to close at 4,355 and the FTSE-100 ended 0.2% higher at 6,813.

The rupee was trading higher at Rs 62.11 compared to Thursday's close of 62.23 tracking gains in equities.

BSE Bankex was the top gainer among the sectoral indices up 0.9% followed by Capital Goods, Metal, Auto, IT and FMCG indices among others.

In the financials segment ICICI Bank, HDFC, SBI, HDFC Bank, Axis Bank were up 0.5-1.4% each.

IT majors firmed up on encouraging economic data from the US. Infosys, TCS and Wipro were up over 0.5% each.

Other gainers include, index heavyweights ITC and Reliance Ind up 0.5% each.

In the broader markets, the BSE Mid-cap and Small-cap indices were up 0.6% each.

Market breadth was positive with 772 gainers and 267 losers on the BSE.