Indian Shares End With Modest Gains

(RTTNews) - Indian shares ended Thursday's session with modest gains, with a weaker dollar and lower yields on the back of softer U.S. labor market data, and hopes for a U.S.-Iran deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz helping underpin sentiment.

While banks and heavyweight Reliance Industries attracted buying, weakness in auto, IT and metal sectors serviced to cap potential upside.

The 30-share BSE Sensex rose 373.76 points, or 0.48 percent, to 78,954.76 while the NSE Nifty index finished 11.35 points higher at 24,636, showing significant divergence with the Sensex for a fourth straight session following the Closing Auction Session rollout.

Market participants expect the gap to narrow and pricing inefficiencies to ease as more traders and institutions participate.

The BSE mid-cap index ended little changed while the small-cap index inched up 0.3 percent.

The market breadth was slightly weak on the BSE, with 2,161 shares declining while 2,117 shares rose and 215 shares closed unchanged.

Among the prominent gainers, Eternal, ICICI Bank, BEL, SBI and Reliance Industries surged 2-3 percent.