By Vivek Kumar M and Bharath Rajeswaran
(Reuters) -India’s equity benchmarks rose for a fourth consecutive session on Tuesday, with expectations of strong September-quarter earnings and the central bank’s lending reforms boosting the heavyweight financials.
The Nifty 50 <.NSEI> ended 0.12% higher at 25,108.3, while the BSE Sensex <.BSESN> added 0.17% to 81,926.75. In four sessions, the indexes have gained about 2%.
Twelve of the 16 major sectors advanced on the day. The broader mid-caps and small-caps gained 0.5% and 0.3%, respectively.
Financials rose 0.2%, gaining for a sixth straight session. India’s two largest private lenders and heaviest-weighted stocks, HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank, rose 0.9% each.
“The initial updates from lenders indicate that credit growth has started to pick up. This is positive for the financial space,” said Pankaj Pandey, head of retail research at ICICI Securities.
Over the weekend, HDFC Bank reported credit growth of 10%, while Kotak Mahindra Bank posted a 15.8% growth in loan disbursals during the September quarter.
Non-bank lender Bajaj Finance rose 0.8% on the day, adding to Monday’s nearly 2% climb, after posting a strong pre-quarterly update.
The gains in financials were also supported by the Reserve Bank of India’s move last week to ease lending norms for capital markets and large companies.
However, “IT, which is another heavyweight sector, is not expected to witness any significant recovery in the near term, given the uncertainty over discretionary spending in the U.S.,” ICICI Securities’ Pandey said.
Among individual stocks, Reliance Industries jumped 0.7%, while Bharti Airtel rose 1.4% after data showed they continued to add active telecom subscribers in August.
Bucking the trend, Trent fell 1.9% after the retailer reported its slowest standalone revenue rise since the March 2021 quarter.
(Reporting by Bharath Rajeswaran and Vivek Kumar M in Bengaluru; Editing by Sumana Nandy, Janane Venkatraman and Eileen Soreng)
