Market rally continues: Sensex at new peak, Nifty stays above 10,000 on fund inflows, F&O expiry

Mumbai - The benchmark BSE Sensex soared to a fresh life-time high of 32,533.34 and the NSE Nifty hit a new peak of 10,068.40 in opening trade Thursday on extended buying by investors driven by encouraging earnings by corporates amid positive global cues.

Short-covering of bets as today being the last session of July expiry in the derivatives segment kept the sentiment upbeat.

Rising for the second day in a row, the 30-share index rose by 150.88 points, or 0.46 percent, to hit a new peak of 32,533.34.

The gauge had gained 154.19 points in the previous session to close at a record high at 32,382.46. It had also touched an intra-day lifetime high of 32,413.63 a day before.

Reflecting the overall trend, all the sectoral indices led by realty, bank, IT, technology and power were trading in the positive zone, with gains of up to 1.93 percent.

The 50-share NSE Nifty gained 47.75 points, or 0.47 percent, to trade at its lifetime high of 10,068.40.

Stock of India’s fourth-largest software services exporter, HCL Technologies climbed 3.20 percent to Rs 920 after the company on Thursday reported a 6.1 percent rise in consolidated net profit at Rs 2,171 crore for the first-quarter ended June.

Major contributors to the indices were HDFC Ltd, Asian Paints, Maruti Suzuki, HDFC Bank, Hindustan Unilever, TCS, Hero MotoCorp, Bajaj Auto, Tata Motors, Axis Bank, M&M and Infosys, rising by up to 2.55 per cent.

Brokers said that the market mood remained buoyant, bolstered by domestic and foreign institutional investors’ buying coupled with better-than-expected Q1 earnings numbers reported by some blue-chip companies.

Moreover, a firming trend overseas, especially the US markets which ended at record high yesterday with expectations for another US interest rate hike this year dented by a tepid Federal Reserve inflation outlook, too enthused investors.

In the Asian region, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was up 0.34 per cent, Japan’s Nikkei gained 0.220 per cent while Shanghai Composite index edged lower by 0.32 per cent in early trade today.

On the mint street, the rupee surged by 21 paise to 64.16 against the US currency in early trade at the Interbank Foreign Exchange today as the dollar weakened globally after the US Federal Reserve kept policy rates unchanged.

Increased selling of the American currency by exporters and banks amid a higher opening in the domestic equity market lifted the domestic currency, dealers said.

The dollar weakened against world currencies overseas after the Federal Reserve policy statement highlighted a tepid inflation outlook fuelling speculation that it is unlikely to hike rates in September.

Hardening of interest rates in the US leads to flight of foreign capital from emerging markets due to better yields.

Further, a higher opening in the domestic equity market with key indices hitting soaring to new highs, influenced the rupee uptrend, they added.

Yesterday, the rupee had ended marginally higher at 64.37 in a cautious trade on a day domestic equity markets scripted history.

With PTI inputs