Equities trade on strong footing, Tata Steel jumps 3.7 pc

Mumbai: Equity benchmark indices opened higher for the second consecutive session on Wednesday in line with positive trades across global markets.

There were hopes of a dovish stance from the US Federal Reserve and reports that US President Donald Trump will meet China’s President Xi Jinping to sort out trade disputes. Besides, European Central Bank’s President Mario Draghi said the ECB will ease monetary policy again if inflation fails to accelerate.

At 10:15 am, the BSE S&P Sensex was up 308 points at 39,355 while the Nifty 50 climbed up 89 points to 11,781. Except for pharma, all sectoral indices at the National Stock Exchange were in the green.

Among stocks, Tata Steel surged 3.75 percent to Rs 490 per share. Hindalco was up 3 percent, Indiabulls Housing Finance up by 2.5 percent, Kotak Mahindra up 2.2 percent and Vedanta up by 2.1 percent.

But with the virtual end of the runway for Jet Airways, the company’s share dived another 24.35 percent to Rs 30.60 per share.

Jain Irrigation was down 13.5 percent to Rs 23.55 per share after India Ratings and Research downgraded the company’s long-term issuer rating to ‘IND BBB’ from ‘IND A-‘ while placing it on ‘rating watch negative.’

At the same time, Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum Corporation, Wipro, Bharti Infratel and Hero MotorCorp showed marginal declines.

Meanwhile, Asian stocks rose tracking gains in global shares amid optimism over progress on US-China trade front.

Shares in Hong Kong led the advance with the Hang Seng Index up as much as 2.6 percent. Japanese and South Korean equities also traded higher.

[source_without_link]ANI[/source_without_link]