Domestic benchmarks opened slightly higher on Tuesday, as data showing annual retail inflation eased to a three-month low in October strengthened bets of smaller interest rate hikes from the RBI.
The NSE Nifty 50 index was up 0.14% at 18,354.85 as of 0346 GMT, while the S&P BSE Sensex rose 0.16% to 61,722.74.
India’s annual retail inflation eased to 6.77 per cent last month, helped by a slower rise in food prices, data showed on Monday. Although, that was slightly higher than the 6.73 per cent forecast by economists in a Reuters poll and the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) tolerance limit.
More than 1,000 corporations reported their quarterly results on Monday as the country's month-long earnings season drew to a close. A bulk of them defied a global slowdown to report profit growth and signal better times ahead.
In early trading, Nifty's bank and auto indexes were among the top-performing sectors, gaining 0.4 per cent and 0.6 per cent, respectively.
Tyre manufacturer Apollo Tyres rose over 5 per cent on a rise in quarterly profit, while low-cost carrier SpiceJet fell nearly 2 per cent after reporting a bigger quarterly loss on a surge in fuel costs and depreciating rupee.
Foreign institutional investors bought net ₹1,089 crore worth of equities on Monday, while domestic investors purchased ₹47.18 crore of shares, according to provisional data available with the National Stock Exchange.