Indian equity benchmarks rose on Wednesday amid gains in financial and FMCG shares, shrugging off a mixed trend across global markets amid persistent concerns about steep hikes in COVID-era interest rates and their impact on economic growth.

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NSE

The Sensex gained 324.6 points or 0.6 percent to touch 54,211.2 at the strongest level in the first few minutes of trade, and the Nifty50 climbed to as high as 16,139.6, up 81.3 points or 0.5 percent from its previous close.

A total of 44 stocks began the day in the green. Asian Paints, Bharat Petroleum, IndusInd, Bharti Airtel, Bajaj Finance, Grasim and Infosys — opening around 1-2 percent higher — were the top gainers.

On the other hand, ONGC fell more than one percent and was the top laggard among blue-chip stocks. Shree Cement and Hindalco saw losses of up to half a percent.

Infosys, Hindustan Unilever, ICICI Bank, Larsen & Toubro and SBI were the biggest contributors to the rise in both headline indices.

Crude oil prices cooled off, in some respite for oil marketing companies, with the benchmark Brent sliding below $100 for the first time since March.

"The bulls are likely to latch on to this good news. But foreign institutional investors again turning sellers will be a dampener... An important short-term trend playing out in the market is weakness in IT and strength in banking," said VK Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Financial Services.

IT is weak on account of margin pressure in the industry and fears of a possible US recession. Banking is strong due to the strong fundamentals," he said.

Overall market breadth was largely neutral with a bias towards the bulls, as 1,683 stocks rose and 1,521 fell on BSE.

Global markets

Equities in other Asian markets were a mixed bag on Wednesday, amid persistent worries that steep hikes in pandemic-era interest rates might hurt economic growth. MSCI's broadest index of Asia Pacific shares outside Japan was up 0.7 percent at the last count.

Japan's Nikkei 225 was up 0.3 percent but China's Shanghai Composite down 0.4 percent. S&P 500 futures were flat.

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