Mumbai: Equity benchmark indices recouped early losses around noon on Monday despite global fall.
This came after Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced a slew of measures last week to boost the economy, including roll-back of an increase in surcharge on the income tax outgo of foreign investors.
At 12:15 pm, the BSE S&P Sensex was up by 375 points at 37,077 while the Nifty 50 edged higher by 104 points to 10,933.
But the optimism over Sitharaman’s bid to boost auto and infrastructure sectors along with capital markets was tempered with caution amid renewed trade war escalation between the United States and China along with fresh forecasts of a slowdown in global economic growth.
At the National Stock Exchange, sectoral indices were mixed Nifty financial services gaining by 1.7 percent and PSU banks by 1.6 percent. But metals slipped sharply by over 3 percent while auto was down by half a percent.
Among stocks, Indiabulls Housing Finance gained by 4.1 percent, HDFC by 3.2 percent, Adani Ports by 2.4 percent and Bajaj Finance by 2.3 percent.
The other prominent gainers were Bajaj Finserv, Larsen & Toubro, ICICI Bank, ITC and HDFC Bank.
However, steel majors were down with Tata Steel showing a loss of 5.2 percent. JSW Steel slipped by 4.2 percent, Vedanta by 3.7 percent and Hindalco by 3 percent. Auto major Hero MotoCorp also lost by 2.8 percent.
Meanwhile, Asian shares sank as US President Donald Trump on Friday imposed an additional 5 percent duty on 550 billion dollars of Chinese goods in the latest trade war escalation by the world’s two largest economies.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia Pacific shares outside Japan still shed 2 percent while Japan’s Nikkei lost 2.1 percent. Shanghai Composite fell by 1.3 percent as China’s yuan slumped to a fresh 11-year low against the dollar.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng tumbled by over 3 percent due to continuing anti-government protests amid an economic slump.