After opening with a small gain of 19.72 points, Indian equities continued to trade marginally higher with selective buying and selling seen across some of the pivotal stocks.
 
For the week ended Feb 7, 2009, India’s benchmark wholesale price index (WPI), inflation fell below 4% to 3.92%, as compared to 4.39% during the last week, mainly because of declining worldwide crude oil prices

The annual inflation rate was 4.98 per cent during the corresponding week of the previous year.

Realty, banking, metal and capital goods stocks were the major gainers, while FMCG, pharmaceutical and IT stocks remained subdued owing to lack of support.

Select capital goods, power and bank stocks came up on heavy buying enquiries during mid morning trade.

At 11:45 hrs, the benchmark Sensex was up 27.12 points to 9,042.85 levels. In the broader markets, the Nifty surged 11.70 points (0.42%) to 2,794.

Alok Agarwal, Head of Research, KR Choksey securities said, “The markets are clearly headed southwards. Investors should avoid realty and auto stocks at this stage.”

On continued buying support, BSE Midcap and Smallcap were up by 0.62% and 0.50% respectively.

Overall market breadth was positive. Out of the total 1,813 shares traded at BSE, 1,083 advanced, 666 declined while 64 remained unchanged.

The major gainers in the 30-share index were Wipro, which surged 3.7%, Mahindra & Mahindra gained 3.4% and Grasim Industries was up by 3.25%.

The other gainers were Maruti Suzuki, HDFC, Tata Steel, DLF, Reliance Infrastructure, SBI, Sterlite Industries, JP Asso, Tata Motors, BHEL, HDFC Bank, Sesa Goa, SAIL, Jindal Steel, Ispat Industries, NMDC, RCom, TCS, NTPC, ICICI Bank, Akruti City, HDIL, Orbit Corporation, Omaxe, Unitech, Parsvnath Developers, Ansal Infrastructure, Penland, India Bulls Real Estate and Sobha Developers.

Japan's Nikkei stock average rose 0.5% today, a day after closing at its lowest in nearly four months, with exporters leading the market higher after the dollar surged above 93 yen for the first time in six weeks.

U.S. stocks fell to three-month lows on Wednesday as shareholders faced fresh indications that the recession is intensifying after data showed the U.S. housing market dropped further in Jan 2009.

The Dow Jones industrial average lost 29.62 points to 7,522.98. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.SPX> dropped 4.34 points to 784.83. The Nasdaq Composite Index declined 6.84 points to 1,463.82.