Mumbai, August 18: Equity benchmark indices edged higher during early hours on Wednesday with banking and financial scrips seeing buying interest.

At 10:15 am, the BSE S&P Sensex was up by 246 points or 0.44 per cent at 56,038 while the Nifty 50 moved higher by 70 points or 0.42 per cent to 16,685.

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Except for Nifty auto, all sectoral indices were in the positive terrain with Nifty financial service surging by 0.6 per cent, FMCG by 0.5 per cent and private bank by 0.3 per cent.

Among stocks, HDFC Bank gained by 1.8 per cent to Rs 1,542.40 per share as the Reserve Bank of India eased curbs on issuing new credit cards.

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Axis Bank was up by 0.6 per cent, Bajaj Finance by 1.7 per cent, Bajaj Finserv by 0.9 per cent, SBI Life by 0.7 per cent and HDFC Life by 0.6 per cent.

However, among those which lost marginally were Hero MotoCorp, Wipro, UPL, Cipla, Maruti Suzuki and Tata Motors.

Meanwhile, Asian shares held near year-to-date lows as overnight declines on Wall Street reinforced worries about the economic impact of Delta coronavirus variant sweeping through the region.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia Pacific shares outside Japan was up 0.19 per cent, having fallen for the past five sessions. Japan's Nikkei rose 0.35 per cent but Taiwan stocks fell 1.09 per cent.

(The above story is verified and authored by ANI staff, ANI is South Asia's leading multimedia news agency with over 100 bureaus in India, South Asia and across the globe. ANI brings the latest news on Politics and Current Affairs in India & around the World, Sports, Health, Fitness, Entertainment, & News. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)