Indian share markets recouped early losses during afternoon deals and ended today's volatile session higher.

Benchmark indices bounced back from early losses and ended on a positive note as India opened free inoculation for all citizens from today after the country reported lowest spike of daily corona cases in 88 days.

Also, the domestic equity benchmark made a steep gap-down start today tracking global peers following Federal Reserve official's hawkish comments that suggested the first interest rate hike by the US central bank could come as early as the end of 2022.

At the closing bell, the BSE Sensex stood higher by 230 points (up 0.4%).

Meanwhile, the NSE Nifty closed higher by 63 points (up 0.4%).

Adani Ports and NTPC were among the top gainers today.

UPL and Wipro, on the other hand, were among the top losers today.

The SGX Nifty was trading at 15,728, down by 23 points, at the time of writing.

Both, the BSE MidCap index and the BSE SmallCap index ended up by 0.8%.

Sectoral indices ended on a positive note with stocks in the power sector, realty sector, and oil & gas sector witnessing most of the buying interest.

Auto and IT stocks, on the other hand, witnessed selling pressure.

Shares of United Breweries and Indian Overseas Bank hit their respective 52-week highs today.

Asian stock markets ended on a negative note today due to growing expectations that the Federal Reserve will begin lifting interest rates as early as next year as it looks to prevent the economic recovery from overheating.

The Hang Seng ended down by 1.1%, while the Shanghai Composite ended the day up by 0.1%.

The Nikkei ended down by 3.3% in today's session.

US stock futures are trading on a positive note today with the Dow Futures trading up by 203 points.

The rupee is trading at 74.10 against the US$.

Gold prices for the latest contract on MCX are trading up by 0.5% at Rs 47,001 per 10 grams.

In news from the finance sector, Centrum Capital was among the top buzzing stocks today.

Shares of Centrum Capital surged 16% to Rs 58.5 per share today, scaling its new 52-week high after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) gave in-principle approval to Centrum Financial Services for setting up a small finance bank (SFB).

Both Centrum and BharatPe are ready to take over the crisis-ridden Punjab & Maharashtra Co-Operative (PMC) Bank as equal partners.

The joint venture floated by the Centrum Group and digital payments startup Bharatpe for launching a small finance bank will infuse Rs 18 bn capital into troubled PMC on its merger with the proposed bank, a top Centrum official has said.

On Friday, the Reserve Bank gave in-principle approval to Centrum Financial Services, a step-down arm of the diversified financial services group, to set up a small finance bank (SFB) provided it took over the troubled PMC Bank.

The in-principle approval has been in specific pursuance to Centrum Financial Services' offer on 1 February 2021 in response to the expression of interest notification dated 3 November 2020 published by the PMC Bank, the RBI said.

Centrum Capital shares have been on a roll in 2021. The counter has delivered over 220% return in the ongoing year so far. The scrip has surged 41% in the last month.

Centrum Capital's share price ended the day up by 5% on the BSE.

Speaking of the current stock market scenario, note that the BSE Smallcap index touched a lifetime high recently.

Despite the index is up more than 157% since the March 2020 lows, Richa Agarwal, lead Smallcap Analyst at Equitymaster, believes smallcap stocks are set for a massive up move in 2021 and beyond.

Here's why...

As per Richa, the smallcap to Sensex ratio is a good metric to gauge while coming to some conclusions about relative valuations.

So, what is this indicator suggesting now?

As you can see from the chart below, the ratio currently stands at 0.46 times, as compared to long term average of 0.43 times.

Moving on to news from the telecom sector...

TRAI Data: Mobile Subscriber Base Increases in March

Reliance Jio trumped Bharti Airtel in net subscriber addition in March, and Vodafone Idea also showed a positive net addition for the second straight month, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) data released on Friday showed.

While Reliance Jio added 7.9 m, wireless users, in March, Airtel followed with 4.1 m net subscriber addition. Idea recorded a net addition of 1.1 m net subscribers.

In terms of total subscriber's base, Reliance Jio topped the chart with 422.2 m subscribers, followed by Airtel at 352.4 m and Vodafone Idea at 283.7 m. BSNL's total subscriber base stood at 118.6 m, the March data showed.

In the wireless category, Reliance Jio's market share stood at the highest 35.8%, followed by Airtel at 29.8% and Vodafone Idea at 24%.

The number of active wireless subscribers as of March 2021 stood at 993.9 m. Around 12.7 m subscribers submitted their requests for mobile number portability (MNP) in March.

According to the monthly subscriber data by TRAI, the total number of telephone subscribers in India increased to 1,201 m at the end of March 2021, a monthly growth rate of 1.1%.

'The monthly growth rates of urban and rural telephone subscriptions were 0.9% and 1.4% respectively during the month of March-21', TRAI said in a statement.

Bharti Airtel share price ended the day up by 0.1% on the BSE, while Vodafone's Idea share price ended the day down by 1.8% on the BSE.