Equity indices up on vaccine hopes, banking and financial stocks gain

Equity benchmark indices were up by nearly one per cent during early hours on Thursday tracking gains in Asian peers as investors hoped of a vaccine for COVID-19.

At 10:15 am, the BSE S&P Sensex was up by 340 points or 0.96 per cent at 35,745 while the Nifty 50 edged higher by 97 points or 0.93 per cent at 10,527.

All sectoral indices at the National Stock Exchange were in the positive zone with Nifty private bank gaining by 1.5 per cent, financial service and IT by 1.3 per cent each, and auto by 0.8 per cent.

Among stocks, ONGC was the top gainer by moving up 3.4 per cent to Rs 83.20 per share. IndusInd Bank and HDFC Bank rose by 2.5 per cent and 1.9 per cent respectively.

The other prominent gainers were Mahindra & Mahindra, Hero MotoCorp, Infosys, Wipro and Grasim. Among those in the red zone were UPL, Hindustan Lever, Britannia, Maruti Suzuki and Eicher Motors.

Meanwhile, Asian markets traded in the positive zone following positive news overnight around the development of a potential coronavirus vaccine.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia Pacific shares outside of Japan rose by 0.9 per cent following a strong close on Wall Street after a COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer and Germany's BioNTech was found to be well tolerated in early-stage human trials.

The Hang Seng index in Hong Kong led gains among the region's major markets, rising 1.6 per cent. Japan's Nikkei rose by 0.65 per cent and South Korea's Kospi was up by 1.03 per cent.

( With inputs from ANI )