Sensex up 34 points in morning trade

Brokers said emergence of buying by funds and retail investors tracking a mixed trend overseas, after the Federal Reserve said the U.S. economy was picking, helped trading sentiments to improve. File photo

The benchmark BSE Sensex erased early gains but still quoted higher by 34.10 points in morning trade on Friday amid profit-booking in key sectors.

The 30-share index opened higher at 22,493.59 points and traded between a high of 22,575.62 and low of 22,437.94.

It quoted 22,451.90 points at 1000 hours, showing a gain of 34.10 points, or 0.15 per cent, from its last close.

Profit-booking was witnessed in stocks of capital goods, metal, realty and oil & gas sectors.

The NSE 50-share barometer Nifty also traded up by 7.55 points, or 0.11 per cent, to 6,703.95 at 1000 hours.

Major gainers were Tata Power (1.67 per cent), Infosys (1.40 per cent), HDFC (0.95 per cent), TCS (0.93 per cent), HeroMotoCorp (0.75 per cent) and Cipla (0.69 per cent).

However, M&M (1.57 per cent) followed by GAIL (1.30 per cent, Hindalco (1.19 per cent), Tata Steel (1.09 per cent) and Maruti (1.00 per cent) incurred profit-booking.

Meanwhile, foreign institutional investors (FIIs) bought shares worth a net Rs. 454.48 crore yesterday, as per provisional data from the stock exchanges.

Asian stocks rose as investors weighed corporate earnings and waiting for the release of US non-farm payrolls later on Friday.

Key benchmark indices in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Indonesia rose 0.3-0.79 per cent while indices in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan were down 0.19-0.34 per cent.