Market Update: Sensex, Nifty up 0.5%; Federal Bank zooms over 5%, Bajaj Auto hits 52-week high

In the afternoon trade, the Nifty and Sensex held on to their gains after both indices hit record highs in morning trade with the Bank Nifty as well as the midcap Index trading in the positive territory. The midcap Index was up 0.6 percent led by Bharat Financial Inclusion, Jubilant Foodworks NHPC and Sun TV Network which gained up to 2 percent.

Bank Nifty was marginally in the green, up 0.12 percent but the stock which zoomed was Federal Bank that zoomed 5.38 percent after the company declared strong Q2 numbers hitting 52-week high of Rs 124.15 per share. ICICI Bank was the other stock added over 1 percent.

Bharti Airtel continued to lead the way as the top Nifty gainer, up over 4 percent followed by Mahindra & Mahindra, Vedanta and Bosch which added over 3 percent each. Godrej Agrovet followed by Reliance Industries, Bharat Financial Inclusion, Bharti Airtel and Federal Bank were some of the most actively traded stock.

The top gainers in the BSE were Thermax, Federal Bank, Oberoi Realty and Idea Cellular which were all up over 5 percent.

From the Nifty Index, the stocks which hit 52-week highs included Bajaj Auto, APL Apollo Tube, Avanti Feeds and Jubilant Foodworks while on the BSE, Sundaram Clayton, HIL, Endurance Technologies and Bharat Financial Inclusion were some of the few stocks that hit 52-week high in the afternoon trade.

The advance decline ratio was in the positive zone with 35 advances as gainst 14 declines. On the BSE, the market breadth was slightly in favour of the bulls with 1347 advances as against 1289 declines.
Technical Analyst Ashwani Gujral of ashwanigujral.com, recommends buying Jubilant Foodworks with a stop loss of Rs 1,520 and target of Rs 1,600 while Rahul Shah of Motilal Oswal suggests going long in Tata Steel with a stop loss of Rs 705 and target of Rs 740.