Sensex tops 26,000; ICICI Bank up 1%

Gains in early trades were led by private banking majors, ITC and Reliance Industries

Markets extended gains after a firm opening led by shares of private banking majors and select index heavyweights ITC and Reliance Industries.

At 9:30AM, the 30-share Sensex was up 121 points at 26,040 and the 50-share Nifty was up 29 points at 7,769.

The government will released data for July WPI later today.

Asian shares pushed higher on Thursday after a flood of soft economic data led investors to wager on a ceaseless fountain of stimulus from major central banks, sending bond yields tumbling across the globe. Nikkei and Straits Times were up 0.1-0.7% each while Hang Seng and Shanghai Composite were trading with marginal losses.

An economic contraction in Japan, a shock fall in Chinese loans, a surprisingly dovish turn by the Bank of England and a sluggish reading on U.S. retail sales all combined to make any tightening in policy seem a very distant prospect.

ICICI Bank was up 1.2% and HDFC Bank gained 0.8% contributing the most to the Sensex gains.

Among the index heavyweights, ITC was up 0.9% and Reliance Industries gained 0.8%.

Tata Steel was down 1.2%. The steel major posted a 70 per cent year-on-year fall in consolidated net profit for the quarter ended June this year at Rs 337.33 crore, against the Bloomberg estimate of Rs 1,048.5 crore. The decline was primarily due to an exceptional loss of Rs 262 crore, higher tax outgo and the continuing rise in finance costs resulting from ongoing expansions. For the year-ago period, the company had posted a net profit of Rs 1,139 crore.

ONGC was down 1.1%. The oil exploration major reported a 19 per cent jump in net profit for the quarter ended June. However, it missed analyst estimates of earnings, due to higher discounts for oil marketing companies (OMCs). The company recorded a net profit of Rs 4,782 crore during the three-month period, as against Rs 4,016 crore in the corresponding quarter last year (2013-14). This was lower than the Rs 5,850 crore median estimate of 29 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

Among other shares, Shares of Lanco Infratech and Adani Power are trading higher on the bourses after Adani Power has bought Hyderabad-based Lanco Infratech’s Udupi power plant at an enterprise valuation of Rs 6,000 crore.

Lanco Infratech has locked in upper circuit of 5% at Rs 8.95 and Adani Power gained 3% to Rs 53.60 on the National Stock Exchange (NSE).

Adani will take over the plant’s Rs 4,000 crore worth of debt, Lanco will receive Rs 2,000 crore in cash, which it plans to use for lowering its debt.

In the broader market, the Mid-cap index was up 0.5% and Small-cap index was up 0.5%.

Market breadth was strong with 901 gainers and 501 losers on the BSE.