Opening Bell: Nifty above 17,000, Sensex jumps nearly 400 points; banking shares shine, pharma stocks drag

The Indian markets started Tuesday's session on a strong note after headline indices corrected more than 1.5 per cent each in Monday's closing. The Sensex and the Nifty50 opened at 57,125.98 and 17,044.10 respectively.

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Buoyed by good performance from banking stocks, the Bank Nifty also opened above 36,000.

Top gainers on the two indices were Hindalco, Kotak Bank, Tata Steel, Maruti, State Bank of India, Axis Bank, Tech Mahindra and Tata Motors. Divis Lab, Dr Reddy's, Sun Pharma were the top drags

In the pre-open, the Sensex sat in the green with over 350 points gain as 29 index advanced and the only stock in the 30-share Sensex declining. Broader Nifty also saw 49 stocks trading in the green and only one in the red in pre-open.

Earlier, SGX nifty Futures hinted at a positive opening for the Indian markets as the index traded 100 points (99.50) higher to 17,040.00at 8.55 am this morning.

Also, cues from the global markets remained broadly positive on Tuesday as majority of the Asian markets traded in the green in the morning trade and the Wall Street indices closed higher on Monday.

Gaurav Garg, Head of Research, Capitalvia Global Research Ltd

The Indian benchmarks have started today on positive note tracking gains across global markets, said Gaurav Garg, Head of Research, Capitalvia Global Research Ltd. 

 "Traders may take note of the state minister's statement that India currently has the fourth largest foreign exchange reserves in the world. Market participants may be concerned with the report that two more cases of the Omicron variant were detected on Monday," said Gaurav Garg.   

He further said that some cautiousness may come with a private report that the continued effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and concern about future public health crisis impacted Indian business leaders for the second consecutive year.  

There will be some reaction in aviation industry stocks as the Minister of State of civil aviation said the airline and airports in India incurred an estimated loss of Rs. 19,564 crore and Rs 5,116crore, respectively in 2020-2021 due to severe disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, he said.  "Our research suggests that the levels of 16,750 may act as an important support level in the market. we can expect it to trade in the range of 16,750-17,300. 

Japanese Nikkei 225 was trading 1.12 per cent up, while Hang Seng Index at the Hong Kong Exchange also gained 1.08% and Shanghai Composite was trading 0.26% higher around 7.30 am.

Among the Wall Street indices, Dow Jones gained 1.87 per cent, Nasdaq Composite 0.93 per cent, S&P 500 1.17% and Russell 2000 surged 205 per cent in Monday's closing.