Sensex Gains 200 pts, Nifty Above 17,600 on Last Trading Day of Samvat 2078

Sensex Today: Domestic equity markets opened on a quiet note amid sombre mood overseas, higher yields, and firm crude oil prices.  Key indices Nifty50 rose over 50 points to trade above 17,600 levels and the S&P BSE Sensex advanced over 150 points to trade at 59,393 levels.

Broader markets, too, fell in jumped as Nifty MidCap 100 and Nifty SmallCap 100 indices climbed up to 0.4 per cent.

Barring Nifty IT and Nifty Media indices, all sectors started trade on a positive note. Nifty Bank and Nifty Consumer Durables gained the most, up to 0.7 per cent.

Among individual stocks, shares of Axis Bank gained over 3 per cent after the lender posted 70 per cent YoY rise in standalone net profit to Rs 5,329.7 crore in Q2FY23.

V K Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Financial Services, said: “Samvat 2079 will go down in India’s stock market history as the year of India’s outperformance relative to developed markets and peers. The big question as we usher in Samvat 2079 is whether this outperformance will continue. Even though India’s valuations are high from the short term perspective, economic and earnings fundamentals partly justify the valuation premium. More importantly, the DII/retail support to the market is becoming strong enough to eclipse the FII selling. This explains the logic of FIIs turning buyers (Rs 1864crores yesterday) when US bond yields are moving up and the 10-year yield is at 4.23 percent. IT and banks account for the major chunk of India Inc’s profits. After good Q2 results from IT, leading banks are posting very good Q2 numbers indicating that corporate earnings are in line with the optimistic expectations. Q2 results of Axis Bank and ITC have beaten expectations. The PSU bank index has the potential to sustain its outperformance.”

Global Cues

Asian shares tracked Wall Street lower on Friday while Treasury yields scaled 14-year highs as the prospect of aggressive interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve and recession risks soured investor sentiment.

Tokyo shares opened lower Friday, extending losses after falls on Wall Street as US Treasury yields rose, reflecting fresh rate hike worries. The benchmark Nikkei 225 index slipped 0.37 percent, or 101.18 points, to 26,905.78 in early trade, while the broader Topix index fell 0.44 percent, or 8.37 points, to 1,887.04.

US stocks closed lower on Thursday as data on the labor market and comments from a U.S. Federal Reserve official reinforced expectations the central bank will be aggressive in hiking interest rates outweighed a flurry of solid corporate earnings.

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