Software firms pace India stocks rally as rupee’s fall continues

Bloomberg

Indian equities advanced, driven by shares of software exporters as the rupee headed for a fall for the third straight day. Banks and financial stocks indexes, which initially advanced after the central bank eased bad-debt rules, retreated.
The benchmark S&P BSE Sensex climbed 0.4 percent to 39,784.52 at the close in Mumbai, paring a gain of as much as 0.9 percent earlier.
The NSE Nifty 50 Index also rose. Both measures capped their first weekly
declines in four, sliding from record high closes on
Monday as corporate credit downgrades weighed on
investor sentiment.
Indian equities measures have added about 10 percent this year, surpassed only by China, Australia and New Zealand among major regional markets. The MSCI gauge of Indian stocks is trading at more than 18 times its 12-month estimated earnings, 53 percent higher than a rival index of emerging-market equities and 19 percent more expensive than the MSCI World Index.
“Software stocks helped the markets hold on to earlier gains and a falling rupee can be one of the main reasons,” said Purvesh Shelatkar, head of institutional broking at Monarch Networth Capital Ltd in Mumbai.
Fifteen of the 19 sector indexes compiled by BSE Ltd advanced, paced by the S&P BSE Information Technology Index’s 1.8 percent gain.
Twenty of the 31 Sensex members and 34 of the
50 Nifty companies rallied.