Benchmarks continued to trade higher in late afternoon session as India and United States of America (US) reached a framework for an Interim Agreement regarding reciprocal and mutually beneficial trade. Further, fund inflows by foreign institutional investors (FIIs) have kept sentiments upbeat. FIIs were the net buyer on Friday’s session, buying equities worth Rs 1,950.77 crore. Meanwhile, banking stocks grabbed investors’ attention after Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation (DICGC) announced shift from a flat, decades-old, pricing model to a risk-based premium system. Under the new framework, premiums will be charged on the basis of risk profile of the bank. A better risk profile of the bank could lead to lower premium cost which could lower the cost for the strong banks.

On the global front, All Asian and European equity markets were trading higher as technology stocks recovered from last week's rout on AI-linked jitters.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 84027.94, up by 447.54 points or 0.54% after trading in a range of 83860.42 and 84314.68. There were 19 stocks advancing against 11 stocks declining on the index.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were Realty up by 2.66%, Consumer Durables up by 2.54%, Basic Materials up by 2.13%, Industrials up by 1.96% and Capital Goods up by 1.89%. Meanwhile, there were no losers on BSE sectoral index.

The top gainers on the Sensex were SBI up by 7.20%, Tata Steel up by 3.04%, Ultratech Cement up by 2.59%, Titan Company up by 2.26% and Bharat Electronics up by 2.17%. On the flip side, Power Grid Corporation down by 1.14%, ITC down by 0.94%, ICICI Bank down by 0.76%, Infosys down by 0.75% and NTPC down by 0.56% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, as public sector banks (PSBs) continue to demonstrate resilience and strong asset quality improvement, Financial Services Secretary M Nagaraju has expressed confidence that the combined profit of these banks is expected to cross the landmark Rs 2 lakh crore mark at the end of ongoing financial year (FY26). Emphasizing that the Indian banking sector is in good shape, he said PSBs’ credit growth is at 12 per cent this year, which he described as tremendously good, while deposit growth at 10 per cent is also reasonably very good. 

He said ‘as I said, banks are at the bellwether for the strength of the economy. Therefore, they are resilient. We have very prudent management systems in place under the regulator RBI. So we are not much worried about the external factors negatively impacting our banking sector.’ He noted that the combined profit of PSBs would double in three years. The FY25 closed with PSU banks posting a record profit of Rs 1.78 lakh crore, up from Rs 1.41 lakh crore in FY24, a 26 per cent growth, on account of significant improvement in asset quality, credit growth, healthy capital adequacy ratio and rising return on assets.

Talking about the asset quality of PSBs, he said gross NPA is at record low of 2.30 per cent and net NPA at 3 per cent at the end of September 2025. Provisioning coverage ratio (PCR) improved to 94.63 per cent at the end of September 2025, while the capital adequacy ratio of PSBs stood at 15.96 per cent at the end of the first half of the current fiscal.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 25852.35, up by 158.65 points or 0.62% after trading in a range of 25780.90 and 25922.25. There were 34 stocks advancing against 16 stocks declining on the index.

The top gainers on Nifty were SBI up by 7.21%, Shriram Finance up by 5.07%, Grasim Industries up by 3.52%, Tata Steel up by 2.90% and Ultratech Cement up by 2.66%. On the flip side, Max Healthcare Inst down by 2.48%, Power Grid Corporation down by 1.04%, ONGC down by 0.91%, ITC down by 0.78% and ICICI Bank down by 0.75% were the top losers.

All Asian equity markets were trading higher; Nikkei 225 surged 2331.32 points or 4.12% to 56,585.00, Taiwan Weighted added 621.7 points or 1.92% to 32,404.62, Hang Seng advanced 459.05 points or 1.7% to 27,019.00, KOSPI increased 208.90 points or 3.94% to 5,298.04, Straits Times rose 18.87 points or 0.38% to 4,953.28, Shanghai Composite strengthened 57.51 points or 1.39% to 4,123.09 and Jakarta Composite gained 74.23 points or 0.94% to 8,009.49.

All European equity markets were trading higher; UK’s FTSE 100 increased 28.05 points or 0.27% to 10,397.80, France’s CAC rose 0.16 points or 0% to 8,274.00 and Germany’s DAX gained 143.24 points or 0.58% to 24,864.70.