Indian shares climb on bets of Fed pause, set for third week of gains

BENGALURU, July 14 (Reuters) - Indian shares rose on Friday, and were set to notch a third straight week of gains, as IT stocks benefited from increasing hopes that the U.S. Federal Reserve would pause rate hikes.

The blue-chip Nifty (.NSEI) index was up 0.34% to 19,480 as of 12:11 p.m. IST, while the S&P BSE Sensex (.BSESN) rose 0.3% to 65,758.73.

The more domestically oriented Nifty midcaps (.NIFMDCP100) and smallcaps (.NIFSMCP100) rose 0.46% and 0.81%, respectively.

The blue-chip indexes, however, stayed shy of the record highs hit in the previous session as some investors booked profits.

“We are seeing consolidation in the markets with Niftys immediate support around 19,300 and resistance around 19,550 levels,\” said Ajit Mishra, senior vice president for technical research at Religare Broking.

“But, at the same time, we are seeing rotational buying across sectors, which is helping the index cap the damage from profit-taking.\”

Data late on Wednesday showing U.S. inflation eased reinforced bets that the Fed could end rate hikes after July.

That spurred a 2% jump in IT companies (.NIFTYIT), which get a major share of their revenue from the worlds largest economy, despite tepid earnings reports from TCS (TCS.NS), Wipro (WIPR.NS) and HCLTech (HCLT.NS) this week.

TCS and HCLTech were among the top Nifty gainers. So were Infosys (INFY.NS) and recent addition LTIMindtree (LTIM.NS), both of which will report results next week.

IT, metals, realty and pharma stocks still have potential upside, Mishra said.

Among individual stocks, Sun Pharma Advanced Research (SPRC.NS) climbed 3.5% after U.S. FDA did not raise any clinical efficacy or safety issues on the companys glaucoma treatment.

JBM Auto (JBMA.NS) hit a record high after securing supply orders for some electric buses.