Nifty, Sensex edge up along with Asian peers after Yellen boost

"Bulls took control after two days of the massive selloff, tracking positive cues from Asian markets and in expectation of a bigger U.S. stimulus to keep the liquidity alive", Vinod Nair, Head of Research at Geojit Financial Services.

It took a little over three months for the BSE Sensex to climb from 40,000 to 50,000 points, and took just nine sessions to gain 1,000 points from 49,000 points, Financial Express reported. Meanwhile, the Nifty was trading higher by 104.30 points or 0.72% at 14,625.45 with 26 components gaining. The feel-good factor associated with the inauguration in Washington also lifted stocks on Wall Street in early trades on Wednesday with the Nasdaq and S&P 500 both rallying to new highs.

Among Sensex stocks, Maruti rose the most by 2.75 per cent, followed by Tech Mahindra (2.67 per cent), Mahindra & Mahindra (1.98 per cent) and Asian Paints (1.98 per cent).

President-elect Joe Biden, who will be sworn into office on Wednesday has laid out a $1.9 trillion stimulus package proposal to boost the economy. The sensex's gains were led by RIL, Infosys and HDFC, while selling in HDFC Bank and ITC restricted the rise to some extent.

Healthy buying was witnessed in auto and telecom stocks. On the other hand, major losers were TCS, HDFC, HDFC Bank and Nestle, falling upto 0.43 percent.

BSE Midcap and Smallcap index rose 0.86% and 0.59% respectively.

Japanese market, however, dropped 0.4 per cent due to fresh COVID-19 concerns. Meanwhile, the global oil benchmark Brent crude was trading 0.30 per cent higher at United States dollars 55.91 per barrel.