INDIA STOCKS-Indian shares inch higher after recent slide; IT stocks lead
By Bharath Rajeswaran and Vivek Kumar M
Sept 30 (Reuters) - Indian shares were marginally up on Wednesday after a two-day selloff from persistent foreign selling and elevated oil prices.
Brent crude futures were up 0.5% to $103.1 a barrel after US President Donald Trump denied he would be willing to ease sanctions on Iran.
The Nifty 50 .NSEI was up 0.2% at 22,762, while the BSE Sensex .BSESN added 0.46% to 72,877.11 as of 10:21 a.m. IST. The indexes fell about 1.8% each in the last two sessions and are down about 5.5% in September.
"The market is attempting to stabilise after the recent decline, supported by buying emerging around the 22,650 levels," said Hitesh Tailor, technical research analyst at Choice Broking.
The near-term structure has improved towards range-bound trading to mildly bullish, he said, but added that persistent foreign investor selling remained a concern and could restrict the recovery.
Foreign investors sold shares worth 99.8 billion rupees ($1.04 billion) on a net basis on Tuesday, marking their biggest outflow in about four months. They have offloaded $2.7 billion of worth shares in September, taking the year-to-date selling to $26.75 billion.
Thirteen of the 16 major sectors advanced on the day. The broader small-caps .NIFSMCP100 and mid-caps .NIFMDCP100 added 0.6% each.
Nifty IT index .NIFTYIT rose 2.6% and looked to snap an eight-session losing streak, after dovish comments from a Federal Reserve official lowered bets of a US rate hike.
Higher US rates are likely to curb client spending for IT firms, which generate a significant share of their revenue from the US.
Heavyweights ICICI Bank ICBK.NS and Reliance Industries RELI.NS gained 2% and 1% respectively, while HDFC Bank HDBK.NS fell 1.2%.
Among stocks, engineering firm Power Mech Projects POMP.NS gained 2% after winning order worth $57.2 million.
Molbio Diagnostics MOLB.NS jumped 4.3% after Jefferies initiated coverage of the med-tech company at "buy" at a price target of 1,600 rupees, implying an upside of 27%.