The major benchmarks extended their gains and hovered near their session highs, supported by continued buying in some of the heavyweights.

The BSE Sensex hit a high of 58,456, up 617 points to 58,426. The NSE Nifty gained 183 points to 17,450.

Among Sensex 30 stocks, HDFC Bank and Infosys contributed a third of Sensex’s gains. Reliance and ICICI Bank are other major contributors. The four heavyweights rose 2.4%, 1.4%, 0.9% and 1.1%, respectively.

IndusInd Bank and Maruti remained the top gainers, up nearly 3.5% each.
A total of 160 stocks posted new 52-week highs, including Bank of Baroda, DB Realty, GNFC, National Aluminium, Reliance Infrastructure, Specialty Restaurants, TV18 Broadcast and Zee Learn. On the other hand, 21 stocks hit new 52-week lows, including Astrazeneca Pharma, Jubilant Pharma, Orchid Pharma, Sadbhav Infra, Take Solutions, Tasty Bite and Vijaya Diagnostic.

On the BSE, 227 stocks were locked at their respective caps, while 312 stocks touched their lower limits.

Among industry indexes, the BSE auto and consumer durables indexes each surged 1.7%. Health care, IT, telecom and metals indexes all rose more than 1%.

Elsewhere in Europe, the CAC 40 and DAX 30 were up about 1% each in early trade, while the FTSE 100 was up 0.4%. U.S. futures showed the Dow and Nasdaq opened up 0.5% and 0.7%, respectively.

Complete News Source : Business Standard