Equities buoyant ahead of RBI briefing, banking stocks surge

Equity benchmark indices were buoyant during early hours on Friday ahead of a media briefing by Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Shaktikanta Das, raising hopes of liquidity-infusing steps to absorb the economic impact of coronavirus amid a countrywide lockdown.

A day earlier, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman unveiled a Rs 1.7 lakh crore economic package and announced various welfare measures to tide through the rising pandemic.

At 10 am, the BSE S & P Sensex was up by 940 points or 3.14 per cent to 30,887 while the Nifty 50 edged higher by 341 points or 3.95 per cent to 8,983.

All sectoral indices at the National Stock Exchange were in the positive terrain with Nifty private bank up by 8.4 per cent, PSU bank by 8.1 per cent, financial service by 6.8 per cent and realty by 6.2 per cent.

Among stocks, IndusInd Bank continued its yesterday's upward glide and clocked a gain of 20 per cent to Rs 523.05 per share while Axis Bank was up by 15 per cent.

State Bank of India edged higher by 9 per cent, HDFC Bank by 6.7 per cent and ICICI Bank by 6 per cent. The other prominent winners were Bajaj Finserv, Bajaj Finance and Mahindra & Mahindra.

However, Bharti Airtel, HCL Technologies, Hero MotoCorp and Bajaj Auto traded with a negative bias.

Meanwhile, Asian stocks rose Friday as investors expected that policymakers will roll out more stimulus measures to combat the coronavirus pandemic after US unemployment filings surged to a record.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia Pacific shares outside Japan rose by 1.2 per cent while Japan's Nikkei was up by 1.44 per cent.

The US House of Representatives is expected to pass a two trillion dollars stimulus package later on Friday that will inject the world's largest economy with money to stem the damage caused by the pandemic.