Sensex rises over 300 points led by gains in Reliance Industries, HDFC Bank

The Indian equity benchmarks surged broke out of narrow range and surged to intraday highs led by gains in Reliance Industries, HDFC Bank, Axis Bank, Larsen & Toubro, ITC and Mahindra & Mahindra. The Sensex rose as much as 364 points and Nifty 50 index moved above its important psychological level of 21,450.

As of 10:47 am, the Nifty was up 109 points at 21,458 and Sensex rose 303 points at 71,406.

Asian stocks started the week higher, with MSCI's index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rising 0.42 per cent, although Japan's Nikkei traded lower.

Markets are pricing in a 75 per cent chance of the Fed cutting rates by 25 basis points in March, according to the CME FedWatch tool, compared to a 21% chance at the end of November.

Back home, buying was visible across the board as all sector gauges compiled by the National Stock Exchange, barring the measure of IT shares, were trading higher led by the Nifty Oil & Gas index's over 1 per cent gain. Nifty Metal, Auto, Bank, Pharma, Healthcare, FMCG and PSU Bank indices also rose between 0.5-1 per cent.

Mid- and small-cap shares were also witnessing buying interest as Nifty Midcap 100 index rose 0.72 per cent and Nifty Smallcap 100 index advanced 0.27 per cent.

Reliance Industries was the top mover in the Nifty 50 index on reports that the company signed a non-binding term sheet with Walt Disney to merge their media operations.

Under the merger Reliance would own 51% through a combination of shares and cash, with Disney holding the remaining 49%, giving more control to Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance group, the newspaper said.

Following this report shares of Reliance's media business Network18 rose as much as 7 per cent.

Hero MotoCorp was top Nifty gainer, the stock rose 3.06 per cent to Rs 4,056. Wipro, Adani Enterprises, Divi's Labs, Coal India, NTPC, Mahindra & Mahindra and BPCL also rose 1.5-2 per cent.

On the flipside, Infosys was top Nifty loser after a global company terminated AI agreement worth $1.5 billion.

Bajaj Finserv, Bajaj Finance, SBI LIfe, HCL Technologies, Maruti Suzuki and HDFC Life were also among the losers.

The overall market breadth was positive as 2,388 shares were advancing while 1,257 were advancing on the BSE.