By Sethuraman N R
BENGALURU (Reuters) – Indian shares edged up on Friday, led by advances in banks and metal companies, while a fall in the information technology stocks after bellwether Accenture forecast downbeat year limited gains.
The NSE Nifty 50 index and the S&P BSE Sensex added 0.3% each to 19,591 and 65,680 points, respectively as of 10:49 a.m. IST.
The benchmarks are on track to log about 2% gains for the quarter, if the trend holds, against an over 10% surge seen in the previous quarter.
“The bounce back seen in the last 30 minutes in the previous session has encouraged bargain buying in the morning … But, don’t see any directional moves as we are moving into the extended week-end with U.S.
government shutdown related worries,” said Anand James, chief market strategist at Geojit Financial.
“Don’t think traders have the risk appetite to take prices on a long stretch on the either side,” James said.
Heavyweight IT stocks were the top drag on markets, falling 1%, with Infosys sliding 1.3% after Accenture forecast full-year earnings and first-quarter revenue below Wall Street estimates.
Accenture’s performance and outlook would add to concerns over the near-term demand environment, implying weakness for Indian IT companies, Motilal Oswal analysts said in a note.
The IT index has lost over 5% in the last two weeks.
Other high weightage sectors banks and financial stocks added 0.6% each, while metals gained 0.9%.
Meanwhile, pharma advanced 2.9%.
Among individual stocks, Multi Commodity Exchange of India (MCX) fell 8.1% after the country’s markets regulator asked it to put on hold the proposed go-live of its new commodity derivatives platform.
Navin Fluorine slumped 13.6% after its managing director resigned.
Indian markets will be closed on Monday for a public holiday.
(Reporting by Sethuraman NR in Bengaluru;Editing by Dhanya Ann Thoppil)
