Indian shares extend gains as banks, IT stocks rise

Gains in financial and IT stocks helped Indian shares rise for a second straight session on Tuesday, with the Sensex crossing the 50,000 marks again as some semblance of calm returned to global bond markets after last week's turmoil.

The NSE Nifty 50 index rose 1.07% to 14,919.85 by 0441 GMT and the S&P BSE Sensex firmed 1.08% to 50,390.60, having risen above the 50,000 mark 16 times in February.

Both the indexes advanced 1.5% on Monday as a halt in the recent bond markets sell-off buoyed riskier assets, while an expansion of a vaccination drive at home and upbeat domestic economic growth also supported sentiment.

Broader Asian shares also extended gains on Tuesday, with MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rising 0.97%.

"In the brief fight between equity bulls and bond bears, it appears that equity bulls have won," said V.K. Vijaykumar, chief investment strategist at Geojit Financial Services.

In domestic trading, IT firm Infosys rose 2.2% and was among the top boosts to the Nifty. The broader Nifty IT index gained 2%.

Lender HDFC Bank firmed 1.2%, while Nifty's private bank and PSU bank indices rose more than 1% each.

State-run refiner advanced 5.96% and was the top gainer on the Nifty after it approved a stake sale in the Numaligarh Refinery for $1.35 billion.

Nifty's Smallcap100 and Midcap 50 indices, both of which have outperformed the benchmark this year with a gain of more than 17% each, added over 1%.

Meanwhile, newspapers https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/stocks/news/fm-nse-glitch-cost-govt-immensely/articleshow/81280212.cms cited the Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman as saying that the unexpected technical glitch that halted trading at the National Stock Exchange last Wednesday had cost the government "immensely."