Mumbai:
Reversing an early downward trend, the BSE benchmark on Friday recovered over 67 points in late morning trade largely on the back of fresh buying mainly in IT, tech, power and auto sector stocks.
Besides, recovery in the rupee from record lows also helped trading sentiments to improve, brokers said.
The Sensex after falling over 79 points in early trade, staged a comeback to quote 67.39 points, or 0.36 per cent, to 18,786.68. The Sensex had lost over 526 points in yesterday's trade.
The NSE 50-share Nifty also firmed up 21.95 points, or 0.39 per cent, to 5,677.85 at 1215 hrs.
Stocks of software exporters caught investors' fancy on hopes a weak rupee would improve their overseas earnings. The country's software exporting companies get over 60 per cent of their revenue from the US and European markets.
The BSE IT sector index recovered by 0.81 per cent to 5,974.17 as Infosys up by 1.06 per cent to Rs 2,392.10, TCS by 1.12 per cent to Rs 1,419.90, while Wirpo by 0.58 per cent to Rs 349.45.
Other gainers were Maruti Suzuki (1.09 per cent) Mahindra and Mahindra (1.17 per cent), Bajaj Auto (0.47 per cent), Hero MotoCorp (2.56 per cent), Reliance (1.12 per cent) Dr Reddy Lab (1.24 per cent), Larsen and Toubro (0.55 per cent) and Coal India (0.79 per cent).
