Indian shares hit new highs; earnings, monsoon lifts mood

BENGALURU, July 7 (Reuters) - Indian shares rose on Friday morning, recovering from some early losses as sustained foreign inflows, strong corporate earnings and a steady monsoon helped shake off fears of further monetary policy tightening by the U.S. Federal Reserve.

The Nifty 50 (.NSEI) index was up 0.09% at 19,514.30, while the S&P BSE Sensex (.BSESN) rose 0.12% to 65,866.84, as of 10:05 a.m. IST.

Both the indexes had lost 0.4% at the open, but recovered to hit fresh record highs for the sixth time in seven sessions.

The benchmarks have risen over 1.5% each this week so far. Eight of the 13 major sectoral indexes logged gains with auto (.NIFTYAUTO) and realty (.NIFTYREAL) indexes gaining over 0.5% each.

The resilience in domestic equities contrasted a slide in global peers after data showed a rise in the U.S. private payrolls, stoking fresh fears of a prolonged high interest regime and triggered a spike in bond yields across the world.

Wall Street equities closed lower overnight. Asian markets declined on Friday, with the MSCI Asia ex-Japan index (.MIAPJ0000PUS) losing nearly 1%.

\“Our portfolio remains 45% invested in India, due to the long-term domestic demand story\” wrote Christopher Wood, global head of equity strategy at Jefferies.

India has the highest weightage in Jefferies Asia ex-Japan long-only thematic portfolio compared to 17% exposure to China.

\“Healthy progress in monsoon, strong foreign inflows and decent pre-quarterly updates have added to the strength in domestic markets,\” said Siddhartha Khemka, head - retail research at Motilal Oswal Financial Services.

Among individual stocks, Titan Company (TITN.NS) rose over 3% to hit a record high after the company said it recorded revenue growth of 20% year-on-year in June quarter, in its quarterly update.

Indian Oil Corporation (IOC.NS) and Praj Industries (PRAJ.NS) gained over 2% and 5%, respectively, after the two companies formed a joint venture to build biofuels production capacities in India.

Reporting by Bharath Rajeswaran in Bengaluru; Editing by Varun H K and Nivedita Bhattacharjee

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