NEW DELHI: Equity benchmark indices on Wednesday registered marginal gains. Sensex climbed 89.64 or 0.12% to 72,101.69 while
Nifty
settled at 21,839.10.
Indian bourses showed a positive start on Wednesday, bouncing back from previous losses.
The Sensex rose by 237.36 points to 72,249.41, while the Nifty climbed 74.25 points to 21,891.70.
Major gainers from the Sensex included Maruti, Power Grid, Nestle, SBI and ITC.
On the other hand, Tata Steel, Axis Bank, Tata Motors, HDFC Bank and Hindustan Unilever witnessed losses.
IT stocks fell by 3% and continued to decline by 0.18%. Financial stocks also dipped by 0.28%. Auto stocks were up by 0.26%, with Eicher Motors leading at 4.22% following an upgrade by UBS.
Narendra Solanki, head of equity research at Anand Rathi said that investors are closely looking for any potential changes in US rate cuts for 2024. The Federal Reserve is likely to maintain current rates, but remarks from Chair Jerome Powell suggesting a delay in rate cuts could impact
market
sentiment as expectations were for cuts to start in June.
Asian markets like Seoul, Shanghai, and Hong Kong closed higher. Japan's stock exchanges were shut for a holiday. European markets traded mostly down.
On Tuesday,
Wall Street
ended positively.
The
BSE
Sensex dropped 736.37 points to 72,012.05, and the
NSE
Nifty fell 238.25 points to 21,817.45 on Tuesday.
Foreign Institutional Investors
(
FIIs
) purchased equities worth Rs 1,421.48 crore on Tuesday.
Direct tax collection surged by 19.88% to over Rs 18.90 lakh crore until March 17 due to increased advance tax collection. Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, fell by 0.80% to $86.68 per barrel.
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