Mumbai. The local stock market reached new heights on Wednesday due to bullish trend in Asian markets and buying in Reliance Industries shares. Both benchmark indices Sensex and Nifty closed at their highest level ever. The BSE’s 30-share index Sensex closed at a new record level of 78,674.25 points, up 620.73 points or 0.80 percent. During trading, at one time it rose 705.88 points to a new all-time high of 78,759.40 points.
The benchmark index Nifty of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) closed at a record high of 23,868.80, up 147.50 points or 0.62 percent. During trading, it rose 168.6 points to reach its new all-time high of 23,889.90 points. This was the third consecutive trading session of boom in the stock market. During this period, investors’ capital increased by a total of Rs 2.53 lakh crore. Among the Sensex companies, shares of Reliance Industries, Bharti Airtel, UltraTech Cement, Sun Pharma, Adani Ports, Axis Bank, NTPC and Bajaj Finance registered gains. On the other hand, shares of Mahindra & Mahindra, Tata Steel, Tech Mahindra and JSW Steel remained in loss.
Vinod Nair, Head of Research, Geojit Financial Services, said, “The domestic market reached new heights on the back of a rise in the stocks of large companies available at comparatively reasonable valuations. In contrast, profit booking was seen in the stocks of mid-cap and small companies due to valuation concerns.” Nair said that similar trends were seen in the global market sentiment, in which there is a consensus on an early cut in interest rates. In the broader market, the BSE Smallcap index gained 0.15 percent while the midcap fell 0.29 percent.
Among the sectoral indices, the telecom sector rose by 2.30 percent, the energy sector by 1.45 percent and the technology sector by 0.78 percent, while the commodity and consumer sectors declined. In other Asian markets, South Korea’s Kospi, Japan’s Nikkei, China’s Shanghai Composite and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng closed with gains.
European markets were trading with a mixed trend in the afternoon session. US markets closed with most gains on Tuesday. Global oil benchmark Brent crude rose 0.80 percent to $85.69 per barrel. According to stock market data, foreign institutional investors (FIIs) made net purchases of shares worth Rs 1,175.91 crore on Tuesday. The BSE Sensex jumped 712.44 points to close at 78,053.52 points and the NSE Nifty rose 183.45 points to close at 23,721.30 points on Tuesday.