BENGALURU: Indian stocks rose on Monday, after declines in the previous two sessions, helped by gains in financial stocks as banks reported strong quarterly results over the weekend.

The Nifty 50 index was up 0.69% at 18,153.30 as of 10:26 a.m. IST, while the S&P BSE Sensex rose 0.76% to 61,084.25.

Thirty-nine of the Nifty 50 constituents advanced while 11 declined.

Most of the major sectoral indexes gained, with the heavyweight financials rising over 1%. Private lenders ICICI Bank and Kotak Mahindra Bank advanced about 1% each after reporting higher quarterly net profit and healthy loan growth.

“Financials is one pocket that cannot be ignored and will likely power markets in the near term,” said Mayuresh Joshi, head of equity research at William O’Neil India.

The earnings from the financials space have been along expected lines on all key parameters such as advances growth, asset quality, net interest margin and provisioning, he added.

Indian shares end lower as weak earnings weigh

Domestic sentiment was also boosted by Wall Street equities’ rally on Friday. Most Asian markets were closed on Monday for the Lunar New Year holidays.

However, analysts cautioned the domestic market will remain volatile as the jury is still out on the impact of rate hikes by global central banks, with valuations still stretched, and as foreign investors continue pulling out.

So far this month, foreign investors have been net sellers of around $1.90 billion worth of Indian stocks.

Among other stocks, Reliance Industries was volatile after reporting India’s largest company by market capitalisation reported a bigger-than-expected fall in quarterly profit late on Friday.

The stock was last up 0.57%. Yes Bank tumbled nearly 9% after logging an 80% net slide in net profit as provisions for bad loans surged in the December quarter.