Mr Vishal Wagh, Research Head
Indian equity benchmarks made an optimistic start on Friday tracking overnight gains on Wall Street. Markets trimmed some of their gains in the late afternoon session but managed to trade in green territory. Sensex crossed the 60,000 marks for the first time ever as domestic equity markets continued to trade in fine-fettle in the noon session. Currently, Sensex and Nifty are trading above 60100 and 17850 levels respectively. Positive global cues, strong inflows by FIIs/DIIs, diminishing concerns about a possible third wave of the coronavirus pandemic, and a pick-up in the pace of vaccination against the disease have contributed to the gains in the markets. Sentiments were also perked up on the report that FPIs stock holding value soars to $630 billion as of August. As of June, this year, the value of FII investment was only $592 billion, which means that as the market rallied frenetically, their holding value jumped by $38 billion even though their net incremental investment was almost nil between this period.
Asian markets were trading mostly lower hurt by persistent uncertainty around the fate of debt-ridden China Evergrande. European markets were trading lower as worries about troubled property developer China Evergrande and weak German business confidence data prompted investors to book some profit after a mid-week rally.
In Nifty 50 top gainers, Asian paints, HCL Tech, HDFC Bank, Eicher Motors, and M&M. The losers are Tata steel, JSW steel, SBI, Divis Labs, and Axis bank.