Sensex zooms 400 points; RIL up 6%

Sensex tops 21,900 in late noon trades led by Reliance Industries and bank shares

Markets continued their uptrend in late noon trades to scale fresh highs, amid firm buying by foreign funds, with index heavyweight Reliance Industries and financials leading the gains.

At 2:45PM, the 30-share Sensex was up 410 points at 21,924 and the 50-share Nifty was up 125 points at 6,526.

Foreign Institutional Investors have remained net buyers in equities for the past 15 straight trading sessions. Since February 12 they have bought Indian equities worth Rs 7,000 crore ($1.1 billion). On Thursday, they were net buyers to the tune of Rs 1,273 crore, provisional data showed.

The rupee was trading higher at Rs 61.05 to the US dollar compared to its previous close of Rs 61.11. Sharp gains in equities for the second straight session boosted sentiment for the Indian currency.

Asian markets were mixed with Shanghai Composite and Hang Seng shares down while Straits Times was trading with marginal gains up 0.2%. Japan's benchmark Nikkei ended at a new five-week high on Friday helped by a weakening yen and the European Central Bank's decision to keep its rates unchanged. The Nikkei ended nearly 1% to end at 15,274, the highest closing level since January 29. For the week, the benchmark share index was up 2.9%. Hang Seng and Shanghai Composite were down 0.1-0.2% each.

BSE Realty was the top sectoral gainer on the BSE up 5.5% followed by Bankex, Capital Goods, Oil and Gas indices. However, IT and Healthcare indices were down over 2% each.

Index heavyweight Reliance Industries was up nearly 6% at 870 on the back of heavy volumes. RIL, which holds third highest weight in the Sensex after ITC and Infosys, has contributed nearly one-third of over 300 points rally in the S&P BSE Sensex today.

The improving macro-economic data boosted sentiment for banks which are a proxy to the economy. ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, SBI and Axis Bank were up 4-6% each.

Bharti Airtel has surged 6.4% to Rs 304 after Standard & Poor's (S&P) Ratings Services said that it had raised its long-term corporate credit rating on telecommunication services provider to 'BBB-' from 'BB+'.

Capital goods also witnessed value buying by foreign funds. Engineering major L&T was up 5% while BHEL was up 3.6%.

Other gainers include, ONGC, HDFC, M&M and Maruti.

Meanwhile, the broader markets were trading flat with positive bias. The BSE Mid-cap and Small-cap indices trading with marginal gains.

Market breadth was marginally weak with 1,390 losers and 1,325 gainers on the BSE.