Indian Shares End Higher As IT Stocks Surge

(RTTNews) - Indian shares eked out modest gains on Friday as information technology stocks witnessed broad-based buying following upbeat earnings and guidance from U.S. chip maker Nvidia, CrowdStrike's upbeat outlook and Salesforce's announcement of a deal with Anthropic to offer its services through Claude.

Positive sentiment in the IT sector was also driven by encouraging business updates from domestic firms.

While HCL Technologies announced a collaboration with chemicals and biotechnology company Wacker Chemie to set up its global capability center in Pune, peer Wipro said it would expand its partnership with Google Cloud to accelerate the enterprise-wide adoption of Gemini Enterprise and agentic AI.

The 30-share BSE Sensex ended the session up 330.91 points, or 0.43 percent, at 77,264.51, while the NSE Nifty index rose 84.80 points, or 0.35 percent, to 24,175.65.

The potential gains in the broader market remained capped as investors awaited Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh's speech at the Jackson Hole economic symposium later in the day for direction.

Despite Warsh's reluctance to provide traditional forward guidance, his remarks on the central bank's approach to inflation, interest rates, the economy and its broader policy framework might significantly shape market expectations regarding potential interest rate hikes.

On the geopolitical front, the White House confirmed it was not in talks with Iran despite diplomatic efforts by other countries.

Market participants awaited greater clarity over whether talks between Iran and Qatar might open the Strait of Hormuz and reduce supply disruptions from the Middle East war.

The BSE mid-cap and small-cap indexes rose 0.2 percent and 0.3 percent, respectively. The market breadth was strong on the BSE, with 2,391 shares rising while 1,931 shares declined and 227 shares closed unchanged.

While IT stocks such as HCL Technologies, Tech Mahindra, Infosys and TCS jumped 3-4 percent, Titan Company, Eternal, HDFC Bank, Axis Bank and Sun Pharma all rose about 1 percent.