The key benchmark indices pared gains in the afternoon trades today. The Sensex was trading 45 points higher at 16,108 and the Nifty was up 14 points at 4,779.

The markets are just witnessing a pullback and they are still in a medium term downtrend. Selloff may be seen at 4,850-4,860 levels, said Shrikant Chouhan, technical analyst at Kotak Securities.

While realty and metal stocks were trading higher, FMCG and IT counters were under some pressure. The realty index on the BSE was up 2.2 per cent and the BSE metal index advanced 1.9 per cent.

The IT index, however, slipped 0.4 per cent.

Among the Sensex stocks, SBI led the gainers. The stock rose 3.4 per cent in early trades. Tata Steel and JP Associates were the other major gainers, up over 3 per cent each. However, HUL fell over 2 per cent today.

Asian markets advanced Friday on the back of Wall Street's rally after upbeat economic figures revived confidence about the state of the U.S. economy.

Every major market turned higher, with Japan's Nikkei 225 stock average up 0.7 percent to 9,782 and Hong Kong's index gaining 1.7 percent to 21,841. South Korea's benchmark rose 1.1 percent to 1,569.50.