RIL drives markets to fresh closing highs

Stocks gained on Thursday, after consolidating for the last two sessions, driven by robust gains in Reliance Industries. The Sensex jumped 222.13 points (0.43%) to close at a fresh record high of 51,531.52 and the Nifty rose 66.80 points (0.44%) to its all-time high of 15,173.30. Dovish comments from US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell bolstered the global investor sentiment.

Strong buying was witnessed in RIL, which rose by 4.43% to close at Rs 2,061.8 a piece.

Shrikant Chouhan, executive vice-president, equity technical research, Kotak Securities, said: “The Nifty closed at the highest point of the day on the weekly closing of the index options. Index giant Reliance Industries pulled the market sentiment.”

However, the smallcap stocks outperformed the gains made by the benchmarks for the second straight session as the Nifty Smallcap 100 rose by 1.81%. On the other hand, midcap stocks underperformed both the benchmark and the small cap index, with the Nifty Midcap 100 gaining merely 0.18% during the day’s trade.

Foreign portfolio investors have remained strong buyers in the Indian equities for the fifth straight month. So far, they have pumped in capital worth $3.27 billion into the markets. On Thursday, they bought stocks worth $125.9 million, provisional data on the exchanges showed. Volumes during the day remained strong, with the futures and options segment seeing volumes worth Rs 68.81 lakh crore. The cash market witnessed a turnover of Rs 66,920.64 crore.

Banking stocks consolidated for the second straight session on account of volatility caused by the weekly options expiry. The biggest losers on the Nifty Bank were Bank of Baroda, Punjab National Bank, HDFC Bank, State Bank of India and ICICI Bank with losses of 3%, 1.9%, 0.36%, 0.34%, 0.14%, and 0.05%, respectively.

However, according to market experts, the biggest swing in profits over the next two financial years is expected to be delivered by banks, energy, auto and telecom companies due to normalisation of depressed earnings. ICICI Securities in its report said, “Equity valuations are stretched at close to 22 times one-year rolled forward basis, but earnings upgrade cycle and low discount rate will remain supportive of thigh valuations.”

Major gainers on the Nifty were Hindalco, RIL, Sun Pharmaceuticals, Adani Ports and SEZ, as well as GAIL, which were up by 5.51%, 4.43%, 2.63%, 2.32%, and 2.1%. Significant losers on the Nifty were Eicher Motors, Titan Company, Larsen and Toubro, Tata Motors and Coal India, down by 2.56%, 2.45%, 1.28%, 1.2%, and 1%.