Stock market live updates: Sensex gains 412 points after RBI policy outcome, Nifty ends above 17,750

Sensex is up 245 points at 59,280, Nifty is trading above 17,700

Sensex is up 145 points at 59,180; Nifty is trading above 17,600

The government is exploring all viable options, including import diversification, to procure crude at an affordable price, a finance ministry report said on Thursday. It added that the present level of global crude oil price, should it persist for long, may come in the way of India achieving a real economic growth rate north of 8% for FY23.

Oil prices inched up on Friday but were set to fall around 3% for the week after consuming countries agreed to release 240 million barrels of oil from emergency stocks to help offset disrupted Russian supply. Analysts said the emergency oil release, amounting to about 1 million barrels per day from May to the end of the year, might cap price rises in the short term, but would not fully cover volumes lost from Russia due to sanctions for its invasion of Ukraine, which Moscow calls a "special operation".

South Korean shares fell for a third straight session on Friday, set to mark their first weekly fall in a month, as the US monetary tightening and Ukraine crisis woes weighed on markets. The won weakened, while the benchmark bond yield fell.

Major US indexes re-grouped following weakness into mid-morning and mid-day lows and ended higher on Thursday. This as investors eyed the war in Ukraine and a potentially more aggressive Federal Reserve. In any event, the Dow Industrials was the first to stabilize, hitting its low a little more than an hour into the trading day. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq bottomed just after the halfway mark of the session.