Indian share markets opened with strong gains on first March, Monday, in-line with the rebound seen in global equities after a sharp fall on occurred on Friday.

At around  10.10 am, the BSE Sensex recorded 718 points to 49818-mark, while the NSE Nifty stood at  1471, up by 212 points in trade. Auto stocks will also be in focus as the auto majors are due to announce their sales figures today.

All sectoral indices have opened higher. The Nifty Bank index opened 1.6 percent higher while the PSU Bank index was up 1.3 percent. Other indices like Nifty Auto, Nifty Media and Nifty Metal opened with gains of over 1 percent each. The I.T. index was up 0.8 percent while the Pharma index gained 0.7 percent at the start of trading.

 Sectorally, all the indices were rising, with 1.8 percent rise in media, financial services, PSU Bank and private banking indices. The market also reacted to encouraging Q3 GDP data announced after market hours on Friday.   Broader markets opened in-line with the benchmark indices. The Nifty Midcap index opened 0.9 percent higher while the Smallcap index was up 1.2 percent.

Meanwhile, Asian indices at the time of writing this copy traded higher, with Nikkei up as much as 2 percent.

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