Indian shares 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 country’s central bank.
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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% last month, helped by a slower rise in food prices, data showed on Monday. Although, that was slightly higher than the 6.73% forecast by economists in a Reuters poll and the central bank’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.
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In early trading, Nifty’s bank and auto indexes were among the top-performing sectors, gaining 0.4% and 0.6%, respectively.
Tyre manufacturer Apollo Tyres rose over 5% on a rise in quarterly profit, while low-cost carrier SpiceJet fell nearly 2% after reporting a bigger quarterly loss on a surge in fuel costs and depreciating rupee.
Globally, investors will get another look at U.S. inflation when the producer price index data is released at 1330 GMT.
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Foreign institutional investors bought net 10.89 billion rupees ($134.50 million) worth of equities on Monday, while domestic investors purchased 471.8 million rupees of shares, according to provisional data available with the National Stock Exchange.
($1 = 80.9650 Indian rupees)
