Asian stock markets are higher today as investors digested regional earnings reports. The Nikkei 225 is up 1.42% while the Hang Seng is up 0.68%. The Shanghai Composite is trading up by 0.29%. Wall Street ended October on a positive note with the three major indices showing their best monthly gains since February.

Back home, share markets in India have opened the day on a strong note following upbeat sentiments in the other Asian markets. The BSE Sensex is trading higher by 202 points while the NSE Nifty is trading higher by 57 points. The BSE Mid Cap and BSE Small Cap index opened the day up by 0.5% & 0.7% respectively.

All sectoral indices have opened the day in green with banking sector and realty sector leading the pack of gainers. The rupee is trading at 65.09 to the US$.

SBI share price surged 1.6% after the bank reduced its marginal cost of funds-based lending rate (MCLR) for the first time in 10 months by 5 basis points (bps) across tenures. The one-year MCLR at the bank now stands at 7.95%.

Dabur India share price rallied over 6.2% after the company reported consolidated net profit of Rs 3.6 billion in the quarter ended 30 September as compared with Rs 3.6 billion reported in the year-ago quarter. On absolute numbers, its net profit grew just 1.3%.

All the telecom stocks are witnessing buying interest today with only GTL Ltd trading in red. Bharti Airtel reported a 76% fall in consolidated net profit at Rs 3.4 billion for the second quarter. It had posted Rs 14.6 billion in the year-ago period.

Consolidated revenue also declined by around 12% to Rs 217.8 billion (Rs 246.5 billion).

Revenues from India stood at Rs 167.3 billion, a fall of 13% year-on-year (YoY), led by a mobile drop of 17% YoY, the company stated.

However, mobile data traffic grew four-fold in the quarter to 784 billion megabytes (MBs), against (178 billion MBs) in the year-ago quarter. Mobile broadband customers rose 34% to 55.2 million (41.3 million).