(Reuters) -Indian shares were muted on Thursday, as IT losses offset gains in bank stocks, with investors seemingly looking past the U.S. Federal Reserve's comments suggesting a continued hawkish stance.
The NSE Nifty 50 index rose 0.04% at 18,090.55 as of 0450 GMT, while the S&P BSE Sensex was 0.07% higher at 60,946.57. The benchmark indexes fell as much as 0.6% each in early trades tracking decline in other Asian markets and Wall Street overnight.
"Our market has not reacted too negatively till now because we have been seeing good foreign investor inflows in the last three-four days," said Neeraj Dewan, director at Quantum Securities.
"There have been pretty strong corporate results. What the Fed does will be data dependent."
Foreign institutional investors bought a net 14.36 billion Indian rupees ($173.61 million) worth of equities on Wednesday, as per provisional data available with the National Stock Exchange.
The Fed raised rates by 75 basis points on Wednesday and said its battle against inflation will require borrowing costs to rise further.
Focus will now turn to U.S. jobs data on Friday, which could offer some cues on future interest rate hikes.
The Reserve Bank of India's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), meeting later in the day, is likely to discuss its response to the government after failing to meet its inflation target for three consecutive quarters. However, Governor Shaktikanta Das said the RBI would not immediately make details of its report public.
In domestic trading, Nifty's public sector bank index rose 1.44% while the IT index declined 1.07%.
Among stocks, Mahindra and Mahindra Financial Services rose as much as 10% after it beat estimates for second-quarter profit.
Adani Enterprises Ltd, Adani Wilmar Ltd, and Hero Motocorp Ltd were up 0.3% each ahead of their quarterly results later in the day. ($1 = 82.7120 Indian rupees)