Shares trade firm; IT shares in demand

The domestic equity benchmark continued to trade with significant gains in morning trade. Shares across Asia were upbeat after US-based Pfizer Inc said its experimental COVID-19 vaccine showed encouraging results in early testing.

At 10:23 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, was up 284.89 points or 0.80% at 35,699.34. The Nifty 50 index added 82.40 points or 0.79% at 10,512.45.

In the broader market, the S&P BSE Mid-Cap index gained 0.40% while the S&P BSE Small-Cap index rose 0.84%.

The market breadth favored the buyers. On the BSE, 1423 shares rose and 775 shares fell. A total of 109 shares were unchanged.

 

Buzzing Index:

The Nifty IT index rose 2.17% to 15,051.55. The index had fallen 1.75% in the past three sessions.

Among the index constituents, Infosys (up 3.65%), NIIT Technologies (up 3.17%), TCS (up 2.41%), Wipro (up 2.12%), MindTree (up 1.79%), HCL Tech (up 1.49%), Info Edge India (up 1.38%), Tech Mahindra (up 0.86%) and Larsen & Toubro Infotech (up 0.71%) advanced.

Stocks in Spotlight:

Pfizer surged 5.04% to Rs 4175 after the company's parent firm Pfizer Inc. on Wednesday said that preliminary data from the first of four experimental COVID-19 vaccines being tested by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech showed encouraging results in very early testing.

Coal India shed 0.15% to Rs 133.70 after provisional coal production dropped 12.8% to 39.20 million tonnes (MT) while provisional coal offtake shrunk by 15% to 41.61 MT in June 2020 over June 2019.

TVS Motor Company was up 0.21% to Rs 384.60. The company recorded over three-fold increase in June 2020 sales to 198,387 units from 58,906 units sold in the month of May 2020. Its June sales, however, are lower by 33.22% as compared to 297,102 units sold in the same period last year. Total exports were 53,123 units in the month of June 2020, down by 24% from 69,900 units in June 2019.

TVS Motor said it is witnessing a positive uptake in both domestic retail as well as exports. The company faced supply chain constraints in June; however, it has undertaken various countermeasures, some of which have started yielding results in June itself. The company is expecting to overcome these in the month of July.

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