India’s benchmark BSE Sensex climbed for the fifth straight session on Thursday to hit an all-time high, while Nifty crossed the 11900 mark on continued foreign inflows amid hopes that the worst is probably over for the Indian economy.
At 10.56 am, the benchmark Sensex rose 0.75% to 40320 points, while the Nifty gained 0.72% to 11923 points..
The Sensex had last touched a record high on 5 June. The 50-share Nifty was 200 points away from its all time high.
In October, foreign investors have bought nearly $700 million in equities, while so far this year they purchased $8.87 billion.
Better corporate earnings for the July-September quarter and reports that the government is considering further tax reforms also boosted sentiment, analysts said. Further, foreign capital inflows may support domestic equities ahead of the expiry of October series of the futures and options contracts.
IIFL Securities expects short covering in auto and select state-owned banks, as Nifty heads to its highest expiry of derivative contracts in the last five months.
Asian indices opened in the green tracking gains in US markets as Federal Reserve lowered its key overnight lending rate by a quarter of a percentage point to a target range of between 1.50% and 1.75%. The central bank signaled there would be no further reductions unless the economic outlook changes materially.
Among the Sensex gainers, State Bank of India rose around 4.2% after the lender’s chairman Rajnish Kumar pitched analysts for a higher valuation of the bank’s enterprise value, asking them to take into account the growth prospects of its subsidiaries and better-than-expected performance in the next fiscal ending March 2021 due to improvement in asset quality and higher growth. Infosys and Tata Motors rose 4.1% and 2.8%, respectively.
JK Tyre and Industries Ltd rose 11% after the company reported an over three-fold jump in consolidated net profit to ₹167.70 crore in the September quarter driven by gains from deferred tax liability.
Realty stocks were trading higher. Indiabulls Real Estate rose 5%, Sunteck realty increased 2.9%, DLF gained 2.6%, Godrej Property climbed 1.6% and Prestige Estate rose 2.2%.
PSU banks were trading higher. Central Bank of India rose 11.5%, Syndicate Bank 6.4%, Allahabad Bank 4.3%, J&K Bank 3.2%, Oriental Bank of Commerce 2.8%, Punjab National Bank 2.7%, Indian Bank 1.8% and Canara Bank 1.2%.
All the sectoral indices were trading higher except the Telecom index. BSE IT index was the top gainer, up 1.8% followed by BSE Tech and Realty indices which were up 1.6% each. BSE Telecom index fell 0.5%.
