Markets shine with metals

Benchmark indices were moving upward in the morning session on Wednesday. This was broad based upmove with good participation from mid-cap and small-cap stocks. The market seemed to be reacting to global cues wherein the US markets gained on the back good earnings and scheduled US Fed's policy meet.

Metal stock Vedanta and Tata Steel were pushing the markets higher with gains of around 3 per cent, while large-cap stocks L&T, ONGC and Infy were also up during the morning session. On Nifty50, the bulls were gaining ground with 39 stock advancing against 11 stock declines on the index.

Top gainer on Nifty50 were Vedanta up 3.14 per cent, Tata Steel up by 2.98 per cent, while IndiaBull Housing, Adani Ports, BPCL were up more than 2 per cent. Among top losers were Infratel, ITC and top auto stocks including Bajaj Auto, Hero Moto and M&M all down around half a per cent.

Domestically, government allowed captive coal mines to sell 25 per cent of their output in the open market for end purposes other than fuel, thereby making these mines attractive for cement and steel producers.

On the oil and gas exploration front, government has decided to allow private oil companies bigger areas for exploration which currently are under ONGC and OIL.

Government has also increased dearness allowance by 3 per cent for central government employees.

Also, the GST Council is mulling to reduce GST rates for residential properties that are under-construction.

At 11:18 hours, the BSE Sensex was at 35,557.46, up by 204.85 points or 0.58 per cent, while Nifty50 was at 10,672.35, up by 68 points or 0.64 per cent on Wednesday. Nifty Metal was the leading index on a sectoral basis up by 1.89 per cent.