Sensex rises 257 points amid GDP optimism; bank stocks lead

The benchmark Sensex climbed 257 points on broad-based buying, led by bank stocks, and notched up its first weekly gain in four amid optimism before the release of India's second-quarter GDP data later today.
ICICI Bank, State Bank of India and HDFC Bank shares, along with ITC and Larsen & Toubro, helped to lift the Sensex while auto stocks Mahindra & Mahindra and Hero MotoCorp dragged it lower.
Sesa Sterlite and BHEL topped the 25 gainers on the 30-share index. All 13 BSE sectoral indices advanced.
The S&P BSE Sensex opened stronger at 20,558.93 and soared to the day's high of 20,819.77. It ended at 20,791.93, registering a gain of 257.02 points or 1.25 per cent.

"With the RBI's insistence on bringing down inflation levels through numerous raises on the repo rate...The markets will be waiting to see if the RBI's actions resulted in an adverse impact on economic growth. Anything below a 4.6 per cent figure would seem to indicate that the RBI would have a difficult time convincing the market of further repo rate increases," said Raghu Kumar, Co-founder of RKSV.
Over the past five sessions, the Sensex has added 574.54 points to clock its first gain after three successive weeks of declines. The index fell 373 points this month, after a record close of 21,239.36 on November 3.

The 50-share CNX Nifty on the National Stock Exchange rose 84.25 points, or 1.38 per cent, to 6,176.10. The SX40 on the MCX Stock Exchange closed 159.26 points higher at 12,344.49.

Domestic institutional investors bought Rs 330.51 crore of shares and foreign institutional investors purchased a net Rs 102.91 crore of stocks yesterday, according to provisional data with the stock exchanges.
The government was scheduled to release GDP growth data for the July-September quarter after trading hours.
Asian stocks ended mixed. Key indices in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan gained while they fell in Japan, Singapore and South Korea.