The party continues on Indian stock markets, with the benchmark indices consolidating their previous day's gains and hitting new highs on Thursday in early trade, tracking bullish Asian cues.
At around 9.30 am, the BSE Sensex hit 30,306 while the Nifty was up 26.75 points at 9,434, led by metal and realty stocks.
The upbeat mood lifted 98 stocks close to their lifetime high in early trade; some of these are GAIL (India), Force Motors, Thyrocare Technologies, Sun TV Network, TVS Motor, Piramal Enterprises, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance, Ceat, Tata Chemicals, Titan Company, Petronet LNG, Godrej Consumer Products, SpiceJet, HDFC, Britannia Industries, Hindustan Unilever (HUL), Ultratech Cement and CESC.
At around 12.35 pm, the indices were trading with higher gains; the Sensex was up 96 points at 30,344 and Nifty at 9,446, a gain of 39 points.
The rupee gained marginally at 64.52 to the US dollar on Thursday in early session.
Union Bank of India was up 2.66 percent at Rs 181. The state-owned lender plans to raise Rs 6,390 crore this fiscal, including Rs 4,950 crore via issue of shares. For Q4, the bank reported 12.5 percent rise in net profit at Rs 108 crore on a year-on-year basis, helped by write-back of excess provisions of income tax. The net interest income rose 14.5 percent YoY to Rs 2,387 crore.
