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Benchmark indices are trading near day’s high led by buying among capital goods shares and index heavyweight Reliance Inds. Firm opening of the European markets has also cheered the sentiments among local investors.
By 1430, Sensex surged by 152 points at 19,017, and the Nifty was up 39 points or 0.67% at 5,743 levels. The Sensex and the Nifty reached an intra-day high of 19,030 levels and 5,747 mark, respectively.
Meanwhile, Japan's Nikkei average fell 1.1% to a nearly four-week low with exporters leading the decline after weak U.S. factory data overnight stoked concern about growth prospects for the world's biggest economy. Gains in real estate firms, however, helped pare back steep losses on expectations that the Bank of Japan will ease monetary conditions further at its policy meeting this week.
European shares rose and the euro edged away from a four-month low on Tuesday but gains were limited as investors awaited data on the region's factory output and remained concerned about consequences of the Cyprus bailout. Euro zone manufacturing activity indexes for March, due later, are expected to add to concerns about the fragile global economic recovery revealed in weaker than expected data from China and the United States on Monday.
All eyes will be towards the PMI data for direction, ahead of the Q4 results season which is set to begin on April 12, 2013 with Infosys.
On the sectoral front, BSE Capital Goods, Healthcare, Oil & Gas and Metal indices have surged by nearly 2% each followed by counters like PSU, Consumer Durable, Power, Realty, Banks and IT, all gaining by 1% each. Apart from Auto, all the major BSE sectoral indices are trading in positive zone.
Larsen and Toubro (L&T) is trading higher by 2% at Rs 1,418 after the company said it has secured new orders worth of Rs 3,700 crore across various business segments in March 2013.
Wipro is trading higher by 3.4% at Rs 445 after the company said that the scheme of arrangement for demerging its non-IT businesses into a separate unlisted company called Wipro Enterprises is effective from March 31.
Maruti Suzuki India has moved higher by over 2% at Rs 1,310, bouncing back almost 4% from intra-day’s low after reporting 9.5% month-on-month growth in car sales at 119,937 units for the month of March.
Other notable gainers are Sun Pharma, Sterlite, ONGC, Cipla, RIL, Tata Steel, HDFC Bank and SBI.
The market breadth in BSE ended healthy with 1,790 shares advancing and 839 shares declining.
