Sensex hits 28,000, Nifty reclaims 8,600; banks lead

Financials were among the top gainers with HDFC leading the gains

Markets have extended gains and are trading near day’s high, amid firm European cues, led by banks.

At 2:30 pm, the S&P BSE Sensex gained 281 points to trade at 28,084 and the Nifty50 was up 87 points at 8,628.

Top gainers from the Sensex pack are SBI, TCS, ICICI Bank, Maruti Suzuki, ONGC and HDFC, all surging between 2%-3%.

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Updated at 11:40 am

Markets gained momentum in late morning deals to trade near their day's high led by financials with Axis Bank paring some of its early losses post disappointing first quarter earnings.

At 11:40am, the S&P BSE Sensex gained 148 points to trade at 27,951 and the Nifty50 was up 43 points at 8,584. In the broader market, the BSE Midcap and Smallcap indices were up 0.7%-1%. Market breadth was positive with 1628 gainers and 685 losers on the BSE.

Meanwhile, investors will closely follow important cues this week like July F&O expiry, GST bill in ongoing monsoon session of parliament, the US Fed

Back home, Bajaj Corp, Canara Bank, Indiabulls Housing Finance, Tata Sponge Iron and Texmaco Rail & Engineering will announce their Q1 earnings today.  

Foreign institutional investors remained buyers with net equity purchases of Rs 438 crore on Friday, as per provisional stock exchange data.

Financials were led by mortgage lender HDFC which rose 1.8% followed by ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and SBI.

Axis Bank which had dropped over 4% in early trades amid disappointing first quarter earnings was down 1%. The private lender reported 21% year on year (YoY) decline in net profit at Rs 1,556 crore for the quarter ended June 30, 2016 (Q1FY17), due to higher provisioning for bad loans.

IT exporters TCS and Infosys were trading with marginal gains amid robust US economic data while a weaker rupee also aided sentiment.

The Supreme Court has asked Cipla to deposit Rs 175.07 crore within a period of six weeks with regard to cases pertaining to overcharging of certain drugs. The stock was up 0.8%.

Dr Reddy's Labs was down over 3% ahead of its June quarter earnings on Tuesday.

Vedanta and Cairn India were in focus after Vedanta sweetened the terms of the deal for the merger of Cairn India with Vedanta. Cairn India was up nearly 1% while Vedanta recovered from early losses and was up 0.5%.

Among others, state-owned oil companies touched their fresh lifetime highs on renewed buying interest amid reports of Cabinet Secretariat’s proposal to merge 13 oil PSUs into one behemoth. HPCL was up over 3% after the board announced a bonus share issue in the ratio of 2:1. BPCL was up up over 2% while IOC was up nearly 4% on talks of merger of its subsidiary Chennai Petroleum Corporation.

Paper manufacturers were trading higher by up to 20% Seshasayee Paper and Boards reported robust earnings for the quarter ended June 30, 2016 (Q1FY17).

Seshasayee Paper and Boards, Shreyans Industries, West Coast Paper and Emami Paper were trading higher by more than 10% each on the BSE. Ballarpur Industries, International Paper APPM, Tamil Nadu Newsprint, Kuantum Papers, JK Paper and Star Paper Mills were up between 5%-10%.