Equity markets rose more than 1 percent as investors covered their short positions on Thursday. The benchmark BSE Sensex ended the day 702 points higher at 57,521 points, while the NSE Nifty50 ended the day at 17,245, up 207 points.

Hindustan UniLever, HDFC Life, SBI Life, Asian Paints, UPL, PowerGrid, L&T, NTPC, SBI, and Infosys led the way with 26 of the 30 Sensex constituents and 45 of the 50 Nifty constituents ending the day in the green. The BSE MidCap index rose 0.86 percent in the broad market, while the BSE Smallcap index rose only 0.19 percent.

Global Markets: Investors reacted positively to a series of earnings reports on Thursday, while also keeping an eye on developments in Ukraine and Russia's next move on gas supply to Europe. In early trading, the Europe Stoxx 600, a pan-European index, rose 1 percent, while Germany's DAX rose 2 percent. The FTSE100 index in the United Kingdom increased by 0.9 percent.

Nasdaq Futures were up 2 percent on Wall Street, while Dow Jones and S&P500 Futures were also up 1 percent. Earlier in Asia, Japan's Nikkei climbed 1.7 percent, South Korea's Kospi gained 1 percent, and China's Shanghai Composite gained 0.6 percent.

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