Sensex jumps 250 pts; Nifty tests 10,950

Rising for the straight fifth session, the benchmark Sensex rallied 250 points after opening on a cautious note on January 21, on continued buying in select blue chips by domestic investors amid positive cues from other Asian bourses.

The 30-share BSE index jumped 228.12 points, or 0.63%, to 36,614.73 in early trade. The NSE Nifty, too, rose 53.10 points, or 0.49%, to 10,960.05.

Sectoral indices led by healthcare, IT, auto, FMCG, power and oil & gas advanced up to 0.57%.

Meanwhile, domestic institutional investors(DIIs) sold shares worth a net of ₹124.91 crore, while foreign institutional investors(FIIs) offloaded shares to the tune of ₹97 crore on January 18, as per provisional data.

Major gainers included Sun Pharma, RIL, Infosys, Bajaj Finance, Bharti Airtel, Tata Motors, Yes Bank, TCS, HUL, Tata Steel, NTPC, ICICI Bank, HCL Tech, Asian Paint, Vedanta, ITC, M&M, Maruti Suzuki and HDFC Bank, rising up to 3.02%.

Among the Asian bourses, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was up 0.19%, Japan’s Nikkei rose 0.45%, Taiwan gained 0.74% and Shanghai Composite Index was up 0.68% in late morning trade on January 21.

The US Dow Jones Industrial Average ended 1.38% higher on January 18.

Bombay Stock Exchange - BSE

National Stock Exchange of India Ltd (NSE)