The Indian equity benchmarks moved higher on Friday ahead of the Reserve Bank of India's monetary policy decision due later in the day.
The Sensex rose as much as 297 points and Nifty 50 index was trading firmly above its important psychological level of 17,850 led by gains in Tata Motors, Reliance Industries, Infosys, Larsen - Toubro and Tata Consultancy Services.
Meanwhile, Asian shares rose on Friday as Chinese shares returned from a one week holiday upbeat, tracking a global rally, while investors also eyed key US jobs data for any fresh insight into the timing of Federal Reserve tapering.As of 9:21 am, the Sensex rose 176 points to 59,854 and Nifty 50 index advanced 88 points to 17,878.The monetary policy committee is widely expected to maintain status quo on the repo rate in order to support growth, but some analysts see a slim possibility of a token increase in the reverse repo rate.Market participants will keep an eye on Reserve Bank's guidance on liquidity withdrawal, given that surplus cash in the banking system recently topped Rs 10 lakh crore mark.Meanwhile, buying was visible across the board as seventeen of 19 sector gauges compiled by the BSE were trading higher led by the S-P BSE Metal index's over 2 per cent gain.
Auto, Oil - Gas, Capital Goods, Information Technology, Industrials, Basic Materials and Consumer Discretionary Goods - Services indices also rose between 0.6-1.2 per cent.On the flipside, Power and Realty indexes were among the sectoral losers.Mid- and small-cap shares were also witnessing buying interest as S-P BSE MidCap index advanced 0.45 per cent and S-P BSE SmallCap index rose 0.6 per cent.Tata Motors was top Nifty gainer, the stock rose 4 per cent to hit fresh 52-week high of Rs 398, on top of Thursday's over 10 per cent jump, after Morgan Stanley upgraded its rating on Tata Motors to "overweight" from "equal-weight", which it had maintained since 2017, saying it expected the automaker's India business to post a full-year profit after eight years of losses.Tata Steel, Hindalco, JSW Steel, ONGC, Grasim, Eicher Motors, Larsen - Toubro, Indian Oil, Mahindra - Mahindra, SBI Life, Bajaj Auto and Dr Reddy's Labs also rose between 1-3.55 per cent.On the flipside, Coal India, HCL Technologies, Asian Paints, Hindustan Unilever, HDFC and HDFC Bank were among the notable losers.The overall market breadth was positive as 1,818 shares were advancing while 809 were declining on the BSE.