Late recovery helps Sensex close in green; IT, bank shares up

Bouncing back towards the fag-end of the session in an otherwise choppy trade, the benchmark BSE Sensex closed on Tuesday nearly 5 points higher at 27,990.21 with gains in IT, PSU and banking stocks, tracking a higher opening in the European markets.

However, a mixed trend on Asian bourses amid investors awaiting cues on whether the Federal Reserve would raise US interest rates this year kept investors edgy. Besides, a cautious approach by participants ahead of the
August-month expiry in the derivatives segment on Thursday too influenced the domestic trading sentiment.

Vinod Nair, Head of Research, Geojit BNP Paribas Financial Services Ltd, said, "Market remains range-bound with a positive bias due to a slight recovery in European markets.  On the other hand, global market is shifting its focus to the possibility of a rate hike in the US by December 2016, which will cast a shadow on the domestic market."

He further said, "The domestic market is losing its trend to rate sensitive stocks post the announcement of the new RBI governor who is likely to maintain a cautious stance on interest rate cut." The 30-share Sensex after a higher opening at 28,012.56, quickly slipped into the negative zone as profit-booking emerged and touched a low of 27,854.43. However, on emergence of buying in the last half-an-hour of trading, it bounced back to wipe out early losses and settled 4.67 points, or 0.02 %, higher at 27,990.21.

The gauge had lost nearly 138 points in the previous two sessions. Also, the NSE Nifty ended 3.45 points, or 0.04%, higher at 8,632.60 after moving in a range of 8,642.15 to 8,580.00. Foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) sold shares worth a net Rs 300.50 crore on Monday, as per provisional data. 

Of the 30-share Sensex, 12 ended higher gaining as much as 2.03%, while NTPC, Bajaj Auto, L&T, ITC Ltd, Hero MotoCorp, Cipla, Sun Pharma, Tata Steel, ICICI Bank, Hind Unilever, ONGC, Dr Reddy's, SBI, RIL, HDFC Ltd and Maruti Suzuki finished lower, fell by up to 2.90%. Infosys stayed in the lead among Sensex constituents and climbed 2.35%, followed by TCS (1.83%), Bharti Airtel (1.10%), Asian Paint (0.98%), Adani Ports (0.98%), GAIL (0.80%) and Wipro (0.77%).

Shares of Tata Power plunged 3.24% after the company's consolidated net profit tumbled by 76% to Rs 72.49 crore for the quarter ended June 30, 2016. Shares of Idea Cellular climbed 6.72% to Rs 100.80 on the back of favourable corporate reports. Among the sectoral indices, IT rose by 1.82%, teck 1.78% and bankex 0.11%, while oil&gas fell 1.48% followed by power by 1.11%. Mid-cap and small-cap indices also fell by 0.28% and
0.07% as investors indulged in trimming positions to book profits.

Globally, China's Shanghai Composite closed 0.16% up, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng closed a shade higher. Japan's Nikkei, however, shed 0.61%. European equities edged higher amid encouraging economic
data and a rebound in commodity producers. Key indices from the continent, like in London's FTSE, France and Germany and the UK, were higher by up to 0.77%.