After a sluggish session a day before, Indian markets gained momentum and registered strong gains. It was majorly positive cues from global markets and strong Q3 earnings reported by auto majors. Also sustained buying by foreign funds boosted market sentiments. Though food inflation has risen over the previous week it continues to remain in negative for the third consecutive week. Food inflation stood at -0.42% for the week ended January 7 as compared to -2.9% in the previous week. Market breadth was strong with 1,827 shares advancing and 1,032 shares declining on BSE.
The BSE Sensex touched a high of 16,662 and a low of 16,572 before it ended 1.2% or 192 points higher at 16,643. Similarly the S&P CNX Nifty surged 1.3% or 62 points to end above 5,000 at 5,018. Mid cap and small cap stocks too edged higher and this time they moved in line with their large cap peers. Both the BSE Mid-cap and BSE Small-cap indices grew by 1.4% and 1.2% higher respectively.
Most of the BSE sectoral indices ended higher with a handful emerging as losers. The BSE IT index lost 0.3% with the rupee touching a 2-month high against the dollar. This was closely followed by the BSE Teck index which shed 0.3%. Interest rate sensitive stocks gained on the expectation of a likely monetary policy easing by the RBI. BSE Realty, BSE Bankex and BSE Auto indices surged by 3.5%, 1.9% and 1.2% respectively. Metal stocks surged on the back of strong Chinese economic data released this week. The BSE Metal index gained 2.8%.
Among the BSE – 30 stocks, 7 stocks were losers while the rest advanced. Sterlite Industries, Tata Power, Hindalco, DLF and NTPC were the top five gainers which grew by6.8%, 6.1%, 5.1%, 4.6% and 4.2% respectively. The top five losers, on the other hand were BHEL, M&M, Bharti Airtel, Infosys and ITC which each fell by 2.7%, 1.7%, 0.8%, 0.7% and 0.2% respectively.
As per the data released by SEBI, Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) were net sellers in equity to the tune of Rs 182 crores. Similarly they were net sellers in debt segment to the extent of Rs 188 crores.