Ahead of the Diwali festival, the Dalal-Street witnessed a strong rally on Friday with all sectoral indices flashing in the green zone, following strong cues from global peers even as hot U.S. inflation data spurred bets of aggressive interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve. The domestic benchmark indices, the BSE Sensex and the NSE Nifty, saw a broad-based rally as bears took a breather in a relief rally after getting hammered in the last one week amid growing concerns about global recession risks from continued rate hikes by central banks worldwide.
The Sensex opened higher at 58,163, against the previous closing levels of 57,235, while it gained as much as 1,200 points, or 2.09%, to hit an intraday high of 58,435 by 12:45 PM. The rally on D-street made investors richer by ₹4 lakh crore as the market capitalisation of all BSE-listed stocks shot up to ₹273.8 lakh crore, from 269.8 crore at the end of the previous session.
Similarly, the NSE Nifty climbed as much as 334 points, or 1.96%, to touch an intraday high of 17,349, against Thursday’s closing levels of 17,014.
At the time of reporting, the BSE benchmark Sensex was trading 1,082 points, or 1.89%, higher at 58,318 and the NSE Nifty was quoting at 17,317, up 302 points, or 1.78%. In line with benchmark indices, the broader market also witnessed a surge in buying activities with midcap and smallcap rising by 0.9% each.
All the Sensex constituents were trading in the green, barring M&M and Power Grid, while Infosys, HDFC Bank, HDFC, Kotak Mahindra Bank, and Tech Mahindra topped the chart. Among others, Reliance Industries, TCS, Larsen & Toubro (L&T), State Bank of India, Maruti, ICICI Bank, HCL Technologies, and others were flowing in positive terrain in the range of 1-2%.
On the sectoral front, all indices were trading in green, while BSE IT and Teck space saw maximum buying. The BSE IT index surged 2.7%, led by Brightcom Group, Infosys, Persistent Systems, Expleo Solutions, and Cerebra Integrated Technologies.
Among individual stocks, Infosys was the top gainer with a 5% gain 5% as investors cheered the IT major’s September quarter and announcement of interim dividend of ₹16.50 apiece. The company’s board also approved the buyback of 5.02 crore equity shares of the face value of ₹5 at ₹1,850 per share for about ₹9,300 crore.
On the global front, shares in the Asia-Pacific region were trading mostly higher, tracking a strong finish on Wall Street overnight even as inflation remained elevated. The data released by the U.S. Labor Department on Thursday showed that consumer prices index (CPI) for September increased more than
expected by 0.4% from August. On an annual basis, the CPI stood at 8.2%, marginally
lower than the rise of 8.3% in August but still near four-decade highs. Higher cost indicates that the Fed would continue with its aggressive policy stance to bring inflation near its 2% target.
In the overnight trade, the S&P 500 closed 2.6% higher after falling 5.7% in the past six sessions. The Dow Jones Industrial Average settled 2.83% higher, while the Nasdaq Composite added 2.23%.
Following strong cues from Wall Street, Japan’s benchmark index Nikkei 225 gained more than 3% during the session on Friday. South Korea’s Kospi rose 2.3%, Hang Seng index in Hong Kong and Taiwan’s Weighted index climbed 1.5% each.
Similarly, the Straits Times in Singapore added 0.4%, while Indonesia’s Jakarta Composite fell 0.5%.
Markets in mainland China were also surging, with the Shanghai Composite and the Shenzhen Component rising 1.8% and 2.8%, respectively.
