Feb 20 (Reuters) - Indian share benchmarks overcame initial jitters and rose by the mid-day trading session on Friday, as heavyweight stocks clawed back some of the previous session's losses.
The Nifty 50 added 0.54% to 25,592.6, and the BSE Sensex rose 0.48% to 82,897.3, as of 12:11 p.m. IST. They had fallen about 0.3% at the open, extending a 1.5% decline in the previous session, their steepest single-day drop in over two weeks.
Fifteen of the 16 major sectors traded higher. The broader small-caps and mid-caps added 0.1% and 0.5%, respectively.
"What we are seeing today is more of a tactical bounce from Nifty 50's 200-day simple moving average (SMA) of around 25,300 points," said Naveen Vyas, head of family office at Anand Rathi Global Finance.
Heavyweights Reliance Industries and ICICI Bank rose 0.9% and 0.7%, respectively, on Friday, after a 2.2% and 1.4% drop in the previous session.
Meanwhile, the volatility index - a measure of the market's expected volatility for the next 30 days - spiked this week to 14.36, just shy of an eight-month high hit in the run-up to the federal budget on February 1.
This comes after Brent crude oil prices rose to $72 per barrel amid tensions in the Middle East. Higher crude prices are a negative for India as it is the world's third-largest crude oil importer.
"We are still not out of the woods. If Brent crude surpasses $75 per barrell and stays at that level for a couple of months, that could put further pressure on Indian equities," said Vyas.
The IT index was the sole loser among major sectors, down 0.5% as ongoing concerns over the impact of AI-linked disruption on earnings continued to weigh.
Reporting by Vivek Kumar M and Bharath Rajeswaran; Editing by Rashmi Aich, Ronojoy Mazumdar and Harikrishnan Nair
Source: Reuters