Indian shares hit record highs on Fed rate pause hopes

BENGALURU, July 14 (Reuters) - Indian shares hit record highs in the last few minutes of trading on Friday to notch a third straight weekly rise, lifted by IT stocks on increasing hopes that the U.S. Federal Reserve would pause its rate hiking cycle.

The blue-chip Nifty (.NSEI) index was up 0.78% to 19,564.50 at close, while the S&P BSE Sensex (.BSESN) rose 0.77% to 66,060.90. For the week, the indexes climbed 1.2% each.

Data late on Wednesday showing U.S. inflation eased reinforced bets that the Fed could pause rate hikes after July.

That spurred a 4.45% jump in IT companies (.NIFTYIT), which get a major share of their revenue from the worlds largest economy, despite tepid earnings reports from TCS (TCS.NS), Wipro (WIPR.NS) and HCLTech (HCLT.NS) this week.

The more domestically-oriented Nifty midcaps (.NIFMDCP100) and smallcaps (.NIFSMCP100) settled 1.15% and 1.42% up, respectively. The midcaps also scaled record highs.

\“This has been driven by very strong fund inflows, as well as the prospects of end of the rate-hiking cycle in the U.S.,\” said Samrat Dasgupta, chief executive officer at Esquire Capital Investment Advisors.

\“While Nifty valuations are above their long terms averages, Nifty technically has very strong supports between the 18,900-19,100 range and resistance around 19,600-19,700 levels.\”

TCS, HCLTech and Tech Mahindra (TEML.NS) were among the top Nifty gainers. So were Infosys (INFY.NS) and recent addition LTIMindtree (LTIM.NS), both of which will report results next week.

Among individual stocks, Sun Pharma Advanced Research (SPRC.NS) closed 2.8% higher after the U.S. FDA did not raise any clinical efficacy or safety issues on the companys glaucoma treatment.

JBM Auto (JBMA.NS) ended 11.4% higher after securing supply orders for some electric buses.