Mumbai, May 17: Equity benchmark Sensex surged over 300 points in early trade on Monday, tracking gains in index majors HDFC twins, ICICI Bank and Infosys.

The 30-share BSE index was trading 300.45 points or 0.62 per cent higher at 49,033. Similarly, the broader NSE Nifty rose 75.60 points or 0.52 per cent to 14,753.40.

SBI was the top gainer in the Sensex pack, advancing over 2 per cent, followed by IndusInd Bank, ONGC, Bajaj Finserv, ICICI Bank, HDFC and Infosys.

On the other hand, L&T, Bharti Airtel, Sun Pharma, Titan and Dr Reddy's were among the laggards.

In the previous session, Sensex ended 41.75 points or 0.09 per cent higher at 48,732.55, while Nifty slipped 18.70 points or 0.13 per cent to 14,677.80.

Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) were net sellers in the capital market as they offloaded shares worth Rs 2,607.85 crore on Friday, as per provisional exchange data.

According to V K Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Financial Services, there are two macro numbers that will exert a big influence on the markets - externally, US inflation numbers; and internally, India's COVID data.

"The jury is still out on the US inflation with the Fed claiming that the spike in inflation in April is transitory and many economists and market experts believing that inflation will continue to rise to force the Fed to taper earlier than expected. We will have to wait to see how the inflation scenario plays out.

"The other number, India's COVID data, indicates steady improvement with fresh cases steadily declining and the latest number at 2.81 lakh is indeed very positive. And, the recovery numbers at 3.78 lakh indicate a steady decline in total caseload. This means the present increasing lockdowns will be a temporary phase which is likely to be ignored by the market," he said.

Elsewhere in Asia, bourses in Shanghai and Hong Kong were trading on a positive note in mid-session deals, while Tokyo and Seoul were in the red.

Meanwhile, international oil benchmark Brent crude was trading 0.19 per cent higher at USD 68.84 per barrel.

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