BENGALURU, Sept 4 (Reuters) -
Indian shares advanced on Monday, led by metals on further support for property sector by China and on rising expectations of a U.S. Federal Reserve rate pause later this month.
The Nifty 50 index was up 0.10% at 19,452 as of 10:21 a.m. IST, while the S&P BSE Sensex rose 0.07% to 65,432.50.
Eight of the 13 major sectoral indexes logged gains. Metals rose 2.5% on fresh measures by China to support its property sector. China is the top producer and consumer of metals. Tata Steel and Hindalco added more than 3% each, topping the Nifty 50.
The more domestically-focussed small-caps and mid-caps advanced 1% and 0.6%, respectively, sustaining outperformance over the blue-chips.
The small-caps and mid-caps have gained over 28% and 26%, respectively, so far this year, more than thrice as much as a 7.5% rise in benchmark Nifty 50 index, on sustained retail inflows.
"The small-cap and mid-cap space will continue to do well because of hopes of healthy returns, which have attracted interest from investors with a short-term time horizon," said Siddharth Bhamre, research head at Religare Broking.
There are pockets in broader markets with valuation comfort, Bhamre added.
Rising unemployment in the U.S., which heightened hopes of a Fed rate pause later this month as well as strong domestic macroeconomic data, including gross domestic product(GDP) and expansion in factory activity bolstered sentiment in the markets, two analysts said.
Among individual stocks, Coal India climbed 3% after production in August rose 13.2% year-on-year.
Maharashtra Seamless climbed 4% on bagging orders of 1.57 billion rupees from Oil India and Indian Oil Corporation.
Moil rose 2% after
reporting
a 53% year-on-year jump in production in August.
(Reporting by Bharath Rajeswaran in Bengaluru; Editing by Eileen Soreng and Dhanya Ann Thoppil)
