Indian equity benchmarks rise after slipping to 7-month lows

-Indian equity benchmarks rose on Tuesday after closing at seven-month lows in the previous session amid a sharp fall in the rupee and worries over domestic earnings.

The Nifty 50 rose 0.26% to 23,144.35 points as of 10:05 a.m. IST, while the BSE Sensex added 0.29% to 76,545.10. The blue-chip indexes lost about 1.4% each in the previous session.

The rupee rose about 0.1% on the day after weakening to an all-time low and falling the most in two years on Monday. Foreign portfolio investors have sold Indian shares worth about $2.75 billion so far in January.

“The sharp drop in benchmark indexes on Monday has prompted the bulls to regroup. While this was anticipated, there is little else to suggest that this is anything more than a dead cat bounce,” said Anand James, chief market strategist at Geojit Financial Services.

A sharp decline in shares of India’s No. 3 IT exporter HCL Technologies after a smaller-than-expected quarterly revenue curbed gains on the indexes.

Eleven of the 13 major sectors advanced on the day.

The broader, more domestically focussed small and midcaps rose about 0.7% and 1.4%, respectively, following the 4% drop on Monday.

HCLTech, down 9%, weighed on the IT index and was on course for its worst session in more than nine years after a December-quarter revenue miss due to underperformance in its software business. The IT index declined 1.7%.

Power Finance and REC rose 4% and 3.4%, respectively, after ICICI Securities initiated coverage on the power financiers with a “buy” rating, citing gains from transition to renewables.

They were the top gainers on the financials index, which rose 1%.

Brokerage Angel One fell 6.3% after posting its slowest profit growth since listing in 2020.

India’s retail inflation eased to a four-month low, data showed, boosting hopes of the central bank cutting interest rates in February.

This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.