Stock market today, April 16 -- Indian banking stocks opened higher in Wednesday's trading session, April 16, extending their winning streak to the third consecutive day, after India's retail inflation eased to a multi-year low. This boosted investor sentiment on expectations of another rate cut by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), which has trimmed the benchmark repo rate to 6% from 6.5% with two consecutive cuts of 25 basis points in recent monetary policy meetings.

Against this backdrop, the Nifty Bank index rose 0.70% to touch an intraday high of 52,749 points. Among individual stocks, Federal Bank, Bank of Baroda, Canara Bank, and Punjab National Bank surged up to 2%. Large-cap bank stocks such as Kotak Mahindra Bank, Axis Bank, Indu...