Indian Shares Jump Over 2% As Auto, Metal Stocks Rally

Indian shares rose over 2% on Friday, putting benchmark indexes on course for their first weekly gain in six as auto and metal stocks and strength in broader Asian equities helped markets bounce back from their worst session in nearly three months.

The NSE Nifty 50 index climbed 2.18% to 16,153.30 by 0517 GMT and the S&P BSE Sensex rose 2.19% to 53,947.66, after shedding more than 2.6% in the previous session on inflation jitters.

"After yesterday's significant downward move, we are seeing some kind of a relief rally," said Narendra Solanki, head of equity research at Anand Rathi Investment Services.

"The market will continue to remain volatile because global factors are still having a centre stage and we are also at the fag end of the results reason."

Global equities have been under pressure from the Russia-Ukraine conflict, prospects of bigger interest rate hikes to contain surging inflation, and the supply chain crisis which has been worsened by China's zero-COVID policy.

On Friday, metal prices firmed and Asian stocks advanced after China cut a key lending rate to support its economy.

In Mumbai, all 50 stocks on the Nifty 50 index were trading higher and nearly all Nifty sub-indexes climbed. The Nifty auto index, realty index and metal index gained more than 3% each.

Among individual stocks, Ashok Leyland jumped more than 8% after the truck and bus maker late on Thursday reported https://bit.ly/3wvARE0 an over three-fold increase in profit for the March quarter.

Godrej Consumer Products fell as much as 4.2% after the personal and household care products maker reported March-quarter profit below analysts' estimates.

Steel products maker Welspun Corp surged 10.3% to hit its highest since February 2020, after the company won an order worth over 50 billion rupees ($644.95 million).

One 97 Communications, parent of digital payments firm Paytm, rose 2.8% ahead of its quarterly earnings results.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)