Sensex Ends The Day Higher; ONGC Surges On Bonus News

Business

oi-Sunil Fernandes

Benchmark indices ended the day higher, led by solid gains in the stock of ONGC, which gained on reports of a likely bonus issue of shares.

By Sunil Fernandes

Updated: Monday, October 24, 2016, 15:38 [IST]

Indian markets ended the day higher, even as IT stocks saw declines in trade, after results of MindTree lagged estimates.

The Sensex ended the day with gains of 101 points, while the Nifty rallied16 points in trade.

Leading the set of gainers in trade were stocks like ONGC and ICICI Bank, with the former rallying as much as 4 per cent on the back of news of the board considering the possibility of issue of bonus shares.

Software stocks were weak in trade with HCL Tech declining by 2 per cent, while Infosys, Wipro and TCS also declined, after MindTree results did not meet expectations. The MindTree stock itself fell 4 per cent in trade.

There is a clear emergence of a trend where investors are dumping IT stocks in favour of banking stocks.

Almost all of the PSU banking stocks saw solid rallies in trade. Apart from IT another set of stocks that were weak in trade were telecom stocks like Idea Cellular and Bharti Airtel. In fact, Idea Cellular shares dropped by a huge 3 per cent in trade. The stock had a few days ago, hit a new 52-week low.

Shares in V-Guard Industries gained as much as 4 per cent after the company reported a superb set of quarterly numbers.

Meanwhile, the rupee was last seen trading at Rs 66.90 to the US dollar.

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