Equity indices on upswing, banking and financial scrips gain

Equity benchmark indices showed smart gains during early hours on Tuesday with banking and financial stocks seeing buying interest.

At 10:15 am, the BSE S&P Sensex was up by 186 points or 0.34 per cent at 54,589 while the Nifty 50 ticked higher by 46 points or 0.29 per cent to 16,305.

Except for Nifty FMCG, PSU bank and realty which dipped slightly, all sectoral indices were in the green with Nifty financial service up by 0.8 per cent, private bank by 0.7 per cent and IT by 0.4 per cent.

Among stocks, Kotak Mahindra Bank gained by 2 per cent to Rs 1,815.90 per share while Axis Bank was up by 0.9 per cent, ICICI Bank by 0.7 per cent, IndusInd Bank by 0.6 per cent and HDFC Bank by 0.6 per cent.

HDFC, HDFC Life, Bajaj Finance, Reliance Industries, Titan, Hindalco and Bharti Airtel too were in the green.

However, those which lost were Shree Cements, Grasim, Hero MotoCorp, Nestle India, ITC, Hindustan Unilever, JSW Steel and Cipla.

Meanwhile, Asian stocks started off on a weak footing as persistent concerns over the spread of Delta variant of coronavirus dented sentiment and triggered falls in metals and oil prices.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia Pacific shares outside Japan declined 0.4 per cent with Korea's Kospi index down 0.56 per cent. Japan's Nikkei was up 0.9 per cent.

( With inputs from ANI )