The Indian market continued gains for the second day. The Sensex added another 262 points to yesterday’s 318-point gain to close at 34,925. The 50-stock index, Nifty, advanced 91 points to 10,605, the best closing figure in the last six sessions.

Share Market Live

NSE

A correction was seen in the Midcap Index after a few days of underperformance. The leading Index closed with a gain of 360 points at 18,787.

The banking index too shared the cheer seen in overall equity market, with the Nifty Bank Index closing 257 points higher at 26,274.

HDFC Bank was the biggest contributor to the Index gains, well supported by Kotak Mahindra Bank and the IT major Infosys.

On the losing side, ITC, ICICI Bank and TCS were the major names. The gaining momentum continued in the forex market as well.

Rupee recovered 54 paise from the intra-day low of 68.28/$ at the one point of the trade. This could also be seen on the back of fall seen in crude, with NYMEX slipping below $70/bbl for the 1st time in more than 2 weeks.

From the midcap space, Cadila Health and Page Ind saw major gains after reporting strong earnings for the January-March quarter. Page Ind reported profit of Rs 94.2 crore against the poll Rs 79 crore. And, margin came in 350 bps higher at 24.1%. Cadila Health saw profit coming in at Rs 590.8 crore against the poll of Rs 530.3 crore.

And, margin came in at 26.8% against the estimate of 24.3%. But, there’s no end to disappoint ment from PSU companies. IDBI Bank’s loss increased to Rs Rs 5,663 crore against Rs 3,200 crore in the corresponding quarter. And, PFC saw a sharp fall in asset quality, with gross NPA doubling to Rs 26,703 crore from Rs 14,977 crore.

In the futures space, Nifty 10,600 Put option added 19.6 lakh shares with premium slipping 61% while Nifty 10,500 Call premium surged 119% and 10,700 call gained 285%. Nifty May Futures premium stand at 3 points against Thursday’s level of 3.95 points.

On the global front, Asian markets closed slightly lower. South Korea's Kospi slipped 0.21% to 2,461, with gains in tech heavyweights failing to give the overall index a boost as steelmakers and financials took a hit. Over in Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 shed 0.1% to end at 6,033, with the energy and materials sub-indexes contributing to losses.

On the mainland, the Shanghai composite edged down by 0.4% to finish at 3,142 and the Shenzhen composite declined 0.93% to 1,810. Japan's Nikkei 225 erased early losses to close higher by 0.1% at 22,451.

Airline stocks were buoyed after the fall in oil prices overnight while the Topix oil and mining sectors slid 0.87% & 2.82% respectively. Despite those slight gains, the Nikkei still finished the week down by more than 2%. Other markets were also lower for the week, with the Shanghai composite declining around 1.2%.