Sensex scales above 27,300 in early trade; RIL's strong Q2 net sparks 5% rise

Continuing from the last week’s positive close, equity markets maintained its upward bias in morning trade Monday, primarily backed by spectacular gains in index heavyweight Reliance Industries whose strong second quarter earnings announcement on Friday triggered hectic buying activity in the counter. Also, investors are pinning lots of hopes on the company’s much-awaited 4G launch scheduled to take off by the end of this year, which is expected to boost the company’s overall revenue in the near term. After having gained 135 points in the previous week, the benchmark Sensex today jumped 120 points to touch a high of 27,334.87. At 10.15 am, the 30-share BSE S&P Sensex was at 27,295.03, up 80.43 points or 0.3 percent from previous close. The broader 50-stock CNX Nifty was at 8,248.15, up 10 points, or 0.1 percent. [caption id=“attachment_2473566” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Reuters[/caption] Market breadth was upbeat with 1,231 stocks advancing against 568 declines on BSE so far. Early optimism in the market was seen despite a lacklustre trend evident in other Asian indices. While Japan’s Nikkei and China’s Hang Seng were trading around 0.3 percent lower, Shanghai Composite was up 0.5 percent in early trade. Leading the gains, Reliance Industries shot up more than 5 percent to touch a high of Rs 960. On Friday, post the market hours Reliance Industries in its earnings announcement said its second consolidated net profit jumped 12.52 percent to Rs 6,720 crore as against Rs 5,972 crore in the same period of 2014-15 fiscal. RIL said its total income declined to Rs 70,901 crore during the quarter, compared with Rs 1,09,797 crore in the year-ago period. The company’s expenses, it said, have declined to Rs 63,368 crore from Rs 1,03,003 crore. Among other gainers, shares of Vedanta rose 1.7 percent to Rs 110.40, Lupin gained 1.2 percent to Rs 2,080, Sun Pharma moved up 1.2 percent to Rs 900 and Gail was up 1.1 percent at Rs 328.30. (Disclosure: Firstpost is part of Network18 Media & Investment Limited which is owned by Reliance Industries Limited.)