Market at record close; Sensex soars 217 pts but Nifty fails to hit 10,000
The rally in HDFC Bank post earnings, Reliance Industries, ITC and technology stocks helped the market end at fresh record closing high on Monday despite global weakness.
It was a good start to the week as the Nifty closed few points away from its historic level of 10,000, up 51.15 points at 9,966.40.
The 30-share BSE Sensex rallied 216.98 points to 32,245.87 but the participation in today’s rally was too low from broader markets as the BSE Midcap and Smallcap indices managed to end 0.3 percent higher each despite weak breadth.
About 1,389 shares declined against 1,330 advancing shares on the BSE.
Ashwani Gujral of ashwanigujral.com said the Nifty has to pass 9,980, the key resistance level, before hitting 10,000-mark. The index hit an intraday record high of 9,982 and immediately saw some profit booking at that level.
“Nifty has almost reached to 10000 and it is much on the expected lines. Now, we expect consolidation or profit taking ahead,” Jayant Manglik, President, Retail Distribution, Religare Securities said.
Some of the index majors will announce their numbers during the week and that would dictate the market trend, he feels. Also, derivatives expiry is scheduled ahead so rollover and unwinding will add to the volatility, according to him.
Index heavyweight Reliance Industries continued to rally, especially after the announcement of bonus issue (1:1), better-than-expected Q1 earnings and the launch of JioPhone. The stock end at record closing high of Rs 1,616.10, up 1.9 percent on top of 3.8 percent rally on last Friday. It is few rupees away from its intraday record high of Rs 1,626.05 hit on January 15, 2008.
Disclosure: Reliance Industries Ltd. is the sole beneficiary of Independent Media Trust which controls Network18 Media & Investments Ltd.
HDFC Bank was the top contributor to Sensex’ gains, up 1.83 percent after solid earnings growth in Q1, though asset quality hit by farm loan waiver.
Nifty Bank ended at record closing high of 24,420.85, up 0.68 percent. State Bank of India gained 1.4 percent and ICICI Bank was up 0.6 percent but Kotak Mahindra Bank lost 0.6 percent.
ITC was up 1.6 percent as sources told CNBC-TV18 that the company hiked cigarette products prices last week, immediately after the GST Council hiked cess on cigarettes to pre-GST level.
Technology stocks also participated in the rally as TCS, Infosys and Wipro gained 1-1.9 percent on top of upside in Friday’s trade after Wipro announced share buyback worth Rs 11,000 crore.
Ahead of earnings on July 25, Bharti Airtel rallied 2.2 percent and Hero MotoCorp was up 0.5 percent but Axis Bank and Vedanta gained more than a percent each followed by Asian Paints (up 0.2 percent).
Dr Reddy’s Labs was biggest loser among Sensex stocks, down 2.4 percent despite getting establishment inspection report for CTO SEZ (the new API unit) in Srikakulam.
In the broader space, M&M Financial, Reliance Communications, Dish TV, Jaiprakash Asssociates, GVK Power, GMR Infra, Motilal Oswal, Ballarpur Industries and Indiabulls Ventures rallied up to 17 percent while GIC Housing, Balaji Telefilms, MRPL, Divis Labs, SREI Infra, Persistent Systems and United Spirits declined up to 6 percent.
On the global front, European markets were trading lower on correction in auto stocks. France’s CAC, Germany’s DAX and Britain’s FTSE were down 0.1-0.9 percent at the time of writing this article. Asian markets ended mixed, with traders focused on the wobbling dollar and the upcoming two-day policy meeting from the Federal Reserve.
