Sensex above 56K mark today, Nifty advances 59 pts to 16,673.60

Sensex Nifty today: The equity benchmark indices edged higher during early hours on Wednesday with banking and financial scrips seeing buying interest.

At 10:15 am today, the BSE S&P Sensex was up by 246 points or 0.44 percent at 56,038 while the Nifty 50 moved higher by 70 points or 0.42 percent to 16,685.

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Except for Nifty auto, all sectoral indices were in the positive terrain with Nifty financial service surging by 0.6 percent, FMCG by 0.5 percent, and private bank by 0.3 percent.

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Among stocks, HDFC Bank gained by 1.8 percent to Rs 1,542.40 per share as the Reserve Bank of India eased curbs on issuing new credit cards.

Axis Bank was up by 0.6 percent, Bajaj Finance by 1.7 percent, Bajaj Finserv by 0.9 percent, SBI Life by 0.7 percent, and HDFC Life by 0.6 percent.

However, among those which lost marginally were Hero MotoCorp, Wipro, UPL, Cipla, Maruti Suzuki and Tata Motors.

Meanwhile, Asian shares held near year-to-date lows as overnight declines on Wall Street reinforced worries about the economic impact of Delta coronavirus variant sweeping through the region.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia Pacific shares outside Japan was up 0.19 percent, having fallen for the past five sessions. Japan's Nikkei rose 0.35 percent but Taiwan stocks fell 1.09 percent.

-PTC News