Indian shares edge higher ahead of GDP data, Powell's speech

Indian shares opened marginally higher on Wednesday, as investors cautiously awaited the gross domestic product data and the U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell's speech due later in the day.

The S&P BSE Sensex SENSEX rose 0.29% to 62,865.74, as of 09:25 a.m. IST. The NSE Nifty 50 index NIFTY gained 0.33% to a new record high of 18,679.55.

Both the benchmarks are on course to log gains for the seventh day in a row, if gains hold.

Sectorally, Nifty Metal CCNXMETAL rose the most and extended gains for the second day, adding 1.1%.

Wider Asian markets were mixed on Wednesday after China's factory activity contracted at a faster-than-expected pace, with the MSCI Asia ex-Japan index (.MIAPJ0000PUS) adding 0.42%.

Wall Street equities closed mostly lower overnight ahead of Powell's speech at a Brookings Institution event.

Among individual domestic stocks, Inox Wind INOXWIND and Inox Green IINOXGREEN 7.45% and 3.72%, respectively, after the two companies announced that they paid debt worth 4.11 billion rupees, as part of efforts to deleverage their balance sheets.

Shares of rice producers, such as Chaman Lal CCLSEL, GRM Overseas GRMOVER, KRBL Ltd. KRBL and LT Foods DAAWAT, rose after government exempted organic non-basmati broken rice from export curbs.

($1 = 81.6160 Indian rupees)