Sensex near day's high...Small-Caps, Mid-Caps underperform

BSE Sensex was trading at 19,440, up 150 points over the previous close. It had earlier tocuhed a day's high of 19,443 and opened at the day's low of 19,339.

The Indian stock benchmarks have extended the morning's gains with no let up in fresh buying in the Large-Cap stocks as traders remain upbeat on the final day of the March derivative contracts. The Indian market is actually outperforming the rivals in Asia where the trend is mixed today. Stock indices in Japan, Hong Kong and Australia are just marginally positive while the Chinese market is under pressure. The Shanghai Composite is down over 1%. Stock benchmarks in the US and Europe gained overnight. At 11:04 am (IST), the BSE Sensex was trading at 19,440, up 150 points over the previous close. It had earlier tocuhed a day's high of 19,443 and opened at the day's low of 19,339. NSE Nifty was trading at 5,830, up 42 points over the previous close. It had earlier touched a day's high of 5,830 and opened at the day's low of 5,803. However, the Small-Cap and the Mid-Cap shares seem to have run out of steam and are under-performing the main indices.The BSE Small Cap index and the BSE Mid Cap index were up 0.6% and 0.2% respectively. Most sectoral indices on the BSE are in the positive terrain. Only the Auto index is in the red. Hero Honda, Grasim, TCS, ONGC, Infosys, L&T, Bajaj Auto, Jindal Steel, BHEL, Dr. Reddy's, ITC, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, NTPC, GAIL, Tata Power, DLF, HDFC, Cairn India and RIL were among the winners in the main indices. M&M, Cipla, RCOM, Bharti Airtel, HCL Tech, Ambuja Cement, Tata Motors and IDFC were among the losers in the main indices. Andhra Pradesh Paper Mills is locked in 20% upper circuit for the second day running after announcing the sale of majority stake to US-based International Paper. Others like Malu Paper, Star Paper, JK Paper, ABC Paper, Yash Papers, Orient Paper, Ruchira Papers and Kalpataru Papers are also up smartly. The market breadth is positive with 1,390 shares rising and 950 shares falling.

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