By Meghna Sinha
The final session of the week brought cheer to investors, as a strong buying interest and positive global cues propelled the benchmarks to record closing highs. Spurred by the interest in banking and financials, as well as consumer goods, the Sensex and Nifty50 closed at fresh highs even as they fell short of their all-time peaks.
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The Sensex surged 467 points or 0.74% to close at 63,384. During the session, the index was up 514 points, but fell shy of its all-time high of 63,583.07. A total of 2,048 stocks advanced on the BSE, while 1,480 declined. The Nifty closed at 18,826, a little over 23 points away from its lifetime high of 18,887.70 scaled in December 2022.
Shankar Sharma, founder of GQuant, said: “I do believe the India party that started in 1991 has just entered its most exciting session! And it’s not too late for newbies: jump right in and make merry!”
It took 134 trading sessions to hit a new closing high for the Sensex, with the previous closing high of 63,284 coming on December 1, 2022. The last time the Sensex crossed a previous high, it took the index 265 sessions ― between October 18, 2021 and November 11, 2022 ― to go from 61,765.59 to 62,795.04.
Most of the sectoral indices traded in sync with the trend and ended in the green. Top gainers in the Sensex were Bajaj Finserv (2.21%), Titan (1.67%), Kotak Mahindra Bank (1.32%) and HDFC Bank (1.30%). The only laggard was the IT sector, with heavyweights like Wipro, HCL Tech and Infosys falling around 2%.
The rally continued in the broader market as both the BSE MidCap and SmallCap ended higher, pushing the market cap of BSE-listed stocks to an all-time closing high of Rs 292.78 trillion.
The Bank Nifty jumped 494.55 points or 1.14% to 43,938.15, with Bandhan, IDFC First, Bank of Baroda gaining over 2%. The index is less than 500 points away from its lifetime high of 44,436.35.
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“The Bank Nifty recovered on Friday, but the benchmark Nifty has been faring better on a week-on-week basis. The positive development is that the Bank Nifty has reclaimed the 44,000-mark. With 43,500 being the support, it can also breach 44,450. Private banks are doing better than PSUs,” said Chandan Taparia, head (technical and derivatives research), Motilal Oswal.
According to provisional data with the exchanges, DIIs were net buyers to the tune of Rs 681.33 crore. FIIs were also net buyers, pumping in Rs 794.78 crore.