Mumbai: Diwali fireworks started one week early on Dalal Street with the Nifty scaling its all-time high on Friday as the better than expected quarterly numbers posted by a few index heavy-weights coupled with slight improvement in the macro economic fundamentals lifted broader market sentiments.
The Nifty hit a fresh all-time high of 10,191.90 in the intra-day trade before ending the session at a new closing high of 10,167.45, up 71.05 points or 0.70 per cent.
The 30-share BSE Sensex scaled 250.47 points or 0.78 per cent to close the day at 32,432.69, just 254 points away from its record high of 32,686.48.
“The festive mood is clearly in the air with the markets having hit new highs at close today, led by the banking pack which had underperformed in the last week or so. The direction change from the time markets took a breather at the end of September till today has been driven by better macro data for India as Industrial production has hit a four-month high along with a slightly softer inflation figures. There are reasonable expectations leading into Q2FY18 results which are likely to be a mixed bag and the market seems to be factoring this in,” said Kunj Bansal, executive director and chief investment officer – equity at Centrum Broking.
The rally was primarily driven by private sector lenders after IndusInd Bank on Thursday reported a robust performance for the quarter ended September 2017.
While the shares of Kotak Bank soared 2.20 per cent, the shares of HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank rallied 2.09 per cent and 1.44 per cent respectively.
Bharti Airtel was the biggest gainer among the Sensex constituents up 7.89 per cent after the company entered into an agreement with Tata’s to merge the consumer mobile business of Tata Teleservices and Tata Teleservices Maharashtra Ltd with it.
“With domestic investors dipping their toes in the equity markets at an accelerated pace, the process of making new highs in the markets are likely to continue beyond the immediate highs. While the Nifty has made a new high in September, the Sensex has not. So the markets are waiting for the Sensex to cross the new highs made in August. With the festive mood in the air, markets are likely to do well in the October month, which has historically been the weakest,” said V.K. Sharma, head – private client group & capital market strategy at HDFC Securities.
