Mumbai, April 20: The Bombay Stock Exchange benchmark Sensex today snapped the five-day losing streak to close 60 points higher as investors found comfort in a less-than -expected hike in key policy rates by the RBI.
Markets soared over 159.41 points soon after the Reserve Bank announced its policy for 2010-11. The 30-share BSE index, however, pared some of the gains to settle at 17,460.58 points, a climb of 59.90 points or 0.34 per cent.
The 50-share Nifty index of the National Stock Exchange gained 0.60 per cent to 5,234.70 points.
Interest rate sensitive sectors – realty, bankex, auto- rallied, up 3.08 per cent, 1.53 per cent and 1.19 per cent respectively. Country’s largest lender SBI gained 3.26 per cent on BSE to emerge as the biggest gainer among Sensex companies. ICICI Bank gained 1.49 per cent and HDFC Bank was up 0.33 per cent.
–Agencies