The markets have cheered the rollout of the historic Goods and Services Tax over the weekend, extending gains amid mixed Asian cues and slowed growth figures in eight core sectors. The benchmark Sensex opened at 31, 156.04 and soared 337 points to touch a high of 31,258, up almost 1 per cent, before letting go of some gains to trade at 31,213, up 291 points or 0.94 per cent at 11.40 am. The FMCG, metal, consumer durables, realty and auto stocks were the biggest gainers, trading up by almost 3.5 per cent.
The NSE index Nifty recaptured the 9,600 level by surging 91.85 points, or 0.96 percent, to 9,612.75 and was trading at 9,599 or up 77 points at the time of filing this report. Investors remained optimistic of the GST rollout on 1 July as they felt that the sweeping tax reform will give huge momentum to the country's economy and tempt global businesses to invest here, traders said.
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ITC climbed 5.79 percent, Tata Steel 1.16 percent and M&M 1.10 percent.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng was up 0.08 percent and Japan's Nikkei rose 0.13 percent in early trade on Monday. The Shanghai Composite, however, came down 0.17 percent.
The US Dow Jones Industrial Average ended 0.29 percent higher on Friday.
The rupee, meanwhile, weakened 10 paise to 64.68 against the dollar in early session as demand for the American unit from importers and banks picked up.
Other than the demand surge, the dollar stayed ahead of the curve against a few currencies overseas that pushed down the rupee.
It was domestic equities with a higher start that came to the rescue and limited the rupee's losses, forex dealers said. On Friday, the rupee had staged a mild recovery by gaining 5 paise to close at 64.58 against the dollar in a cautious trade.
(With PTi inputs)
