Indian Shares Edge Higher On Asian Cues

(RTTNews) - Indian shares opened higher on Monday, tracking firm Asian cues, as oil prices rebounded and a gauge of U.S. consumer sentiment jumped to an 11-year high in January, fuelling optimism over the U.S. economic outlook. The Asian markets are trading mostly higher, although Chinese shares slumped on concerns the recent rally was overdone.

The benchmark S&P BSE Sensex is currently up 160 points or 0.57 percent at 28,282, while the broader CNX Nifty index is up 42 points or 0.5 percent at 8,556.

Wipro is climbing 7.3 percent after the country's third-largest IT services exporter reported a healthy all round performance for the December quarter on the back of growth in infrastructure and healthcare outsourcing services.

However, rival TCS is down marginally and Infosys is losing half a percent on reports that industry body Nasscom may lower its growth estimates of Indian IT sector to 12-14 percent for FY15.

Cairn India, NMDC, Axis Bank, Hindalco, Sun Pharma, UltraTech Cement, Grasim and GAIL are up 1-2 percent.

Reliance Industries is moving down 0.6 percent as the energy giant reported a 4.5 percent year-over-year decline in consolidated net profit for the quarter ended December, matching street expectations.

SpiceJet shares are locked at the 10 percent upper circuit limit. Exiting the cash-strapped airline will cause "a substantial capital loss" to its existing promoters Sun TV group, but the consequences of not hiving off could have been a lot worse, group CFO, SL Narayanan, said in an interview to Business Line.

BPCL, HPCL and IOC are down 1-2 percent. The state-run oil companies on Friday reduced the price of petrol by Rs 2.42 per liter and that of diesel by Rs 2.25 a liter even as the government hiked excise duty on petrol and diesel by Rs 2 per liter each.

Coal India is declining 0.2 percent. Finance minister Arun Jaitley on Saturday stressed that the government has no intention to privatize either the railways or Coal India but instead plans to focus on creating more employment opportunities while safeguarding the existing jobs.

Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services is tumbling 5 percent on dismal Q3 results.

NTPC is adding 0.4 percent after it signed a term loan agreement for Rs 10,000 crore with State Bank of India for partially funding its capital expenditure.

Adani Power is gaining 1.3 percent. The company said it will divest stake in Adani Transmission (India) to Adani Transmission, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Adani Enterprises.

Allahabad Bank is moving up 0.8 percent after raising Rs. 500 crore through private placement of bonds.

The benchmark Sensex soared 663.51 points or 2.41 percent to settle at 28,121.89 last week and the Nifty index jumped 229.30 points or 2.76 percent to finish at 8,513.80 after the Reserve Bank of India unexpectedly cut its repurchase rate by 25 basis points and signaled it could do more if the current inflation momentum and changes in inflation expectations continue, and fiscal developments are encouraging.