Equity benchmarks rebounded in opening on Thursday after two-day losses, supported by PSU banks and technology stocks. The 30-share BSE Sensex was up 48.32 points at 28203.88 and the 50-share NSE Nifty rose 14.25 points to 8738.95. SBI gained 2 percent after cabinet approved merger of five associate banks with the bank. State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur, State Bank of Mysore and State Bank of Travancore rallied 6 percent each. TCS rose 1.71 percent as the board of directors will consider buyback of shares on February 20. Infosys, Cipla, Tata Motors and Sun Pharma were other gainers while ITC, Bharti Airtel, Aurobindo Pharma, Bharti Infratel, Coal India, ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank were under pressure. The Indian rupee has opened lower by 4 paise at 66.94 per dollar against previous close of 66.90. Mohan Shenoi of Kotak Mahindra Bank says dollar rally looks to have lost steam despite Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen's hawkish testimony and uncertainty regarding Trump's economic & foreign policy. Rupee has been resilient on the back of change in monetary policy stance of RBI, he feels. He expects USD-INR to trade in the range of 66.70-67 for the day. The dollar retreated from 1-month high as investors took profits after US data showed robust growth in retail sales and consumer prices in January. Asia markets traded mixed today, despite US gains as stocks closed at fresh highs for a fifth-straight day despite US overnight gains with Toshiba shares down anew. Wall Street pushed further into record-high territory on Wednesday, with the S&P 500 notching a seven-session winning streak, helped by a round of robust economic data and ongoing optimism that President Donald Trump will cut corporate taxes.
State-owned refiners BPCL, HPCL and IOC alongside a company floated by directors of drugmaker Sun Pharma were declared as winners of the much-hyped small oil and gas field discovery auction. The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, approved award of 31 fields out of the 34 that had received bids. Bharat PetroResources Ltd, a unit of Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL), won as many as four of the fields while Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd's subsidiary Prize Petroleum and Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) walked away with three each. Sun Petrochemicals Pvt, a privately-owned company formed by the directors of Sun Pharmaceuticals Industries Ltd, won the B-37 Cluster in Mumbai offshore, for which it was the sole bidder. It had bid for 6 out of the 46 fields that were auctioned last year.
