Sensex, Nifty gain in early trade, RIL shares drop after Q2 results

Benchmark stock market indices opened higher on Tuesday and traded higher in early trade. The S&P BSE Sensex was up 194.75 points at 82,167.80 at around 9:39 am, while the NSE Nifty50 was up 38.30 points to 25,166.25. Most of the other broader market indices were trading in positive territory in early trade, with decent gains in smallcap and midcap stocks.
Among sectoral indices, Nifty Bank, Nifty Financial Services and Nifty IT gained, providing support to the benchmark indices. However, heavyweight Reliance Industries Limited fell nearly 1% in early trade after its net profit declined 5% in the second quarter of FY25.
Meanwhile, HCLTech shares gained marginally after reporting Q2 results.
The top gainers on the Nifty50 were BPCL, Bajaj Finserv, Bharti Airtel, Infosys and ICICI Bank. On the other hand, the top losers were ONGC, Tata Steel, Hindalco, JSW Steel and M&M.
Dr. VK Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist, Geojit Financial Services, said, “Going into the Q2 results season, the market has been expecting good numbers from IT and banking. HCLTech’s good results confirm the optimistic expectations and the banking results, particularly from the leading private banks, also are likely to be good.”
“Unlike IT stocks where there is only limited valuation comfort, the banking stocks offer decent valuation comfort and, therefore, have the potential to move up from the present levels,” he added.
He said the sharp cut in Brent crude by 3% is a macro positive for India, but added that CPI inflation for September coming worse than expected at 5.49% is a “concern and the MPC will be forced to take this seriously and postpone the rate cut to 2025”.
“Even though FIIs continue to sell, the intensity of their selling has come down reducing the pressure on largecaps,” he said.