Sensex soars over 400 points; Nifty reclaims 11,500 mark

BSE benchmark Sensex zoomed over 400 points while the NSE Nifty reclaimed the 11,500 mark Thursday on robust buying in banking, finance, telecom and IT stocks.

Heavy short-covering on expiry of March series futures and options (F&O) contracts buoyed investor sentiment, analysts said.

The 30-share Sensex, after a positive start at 38,208.30, stayed in the green throughout the session, with buying pace gathering momentum towards the end. It finally finished at 38,545.72, showing a gain of 412.84 points or 1.08 per cent.

The broader NSE Nifty settled at 11,570, higher by 124.95 points or 1.09 per cent.

In the Sensex pack, gainers included HCL Tech, SBI, ITC, Bharti Airtel, Sun Pharma, Yes Bank, Axis Bank, TCS, Asian Paints, ICICI Bank, TCS, Bajaj Finance and Infosys, jumping up to 3.84 per cent.

On the other hand, Tata Steel, ONGC, Bajaj Auto, PowerGrid, M&M and Hero MotoCorp fell up to 1.73 per cent.

On a net basis, foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) bought shares worth Rs 1,481.11 crore Wednesday, and domestic institutional investors (DIIs) were net buyers to the tune of Rs 134.92 crore, provisional data available with the BSE showed.

The rupee, meanwhile, depreciated 11 paise against the US dollar to 68.99 (intra-day).

Elsewhere in Asia, Hong Kong's Hang Seng climbed 0.16 per cent, while Japan's Nikkei fell 1.61 per cent, Shanghai Composite Index declined 0.92 per cent and Korea's Kospi slipped 0.82 per cent.

In the Eurozone, Frankfurt's DAX gained 0.50 per cent and Paris CAC 40 was up 0.35 per cent in morning trade. London's FTSE too jumped 0.73 per cent.

The benchmark Brent crude futures were trading lower by 0.37 per cent at USD 67.58 per barrel.