Mumbai, September 17: Even as bulls took a pause after three straight sessions of gains, it was an eventful day on Dalal Street Thursday. National Stock Exchange’s 50-share Nifty managed to mount the 5000 mark on an intra-day basis for the first time since May 23, 2008.
But the indices failed to sustain the gains for too long as profit booking set in. The party pooper was index heavyweight Reliance Industries which slumped 5 per cent after news broke out that its Petroleum Trust had sold 1,50,00,000 shares of the company at about Rs 2,125 per share, a 2.7 percent discount to Wednesday’s close, fetching around Rs 3,188 crore. Reliance Industrial Investments and Holdings, a wholly owned subsidiary of RIL, is the sole beneficiary of the Trust. Although Reliance did not give any details on how it would use the funds, analysts were of the opinion that the move will likely to help the company in possible acquisitions.
Expressing his views on Nifty piercing the 5000 mark, Arindam Ghosh, CEO, Mirae Asset Management told ET Now, “The momentum that we are getting to see now is extremely strong and that is really on the back of external as well as domestic liquidity. If you look at domestic liquidity, I think today’s options for investors into alternate investment have narrowed down considerably. Therefore, there is lot of inflow which is directly coming into the stock market, which is also helping this kind of a momentum that we are now getting to see.”
“The market has continued to make higher tops and the trend remains on the upside. Even though Reliance did not support the market today, capital goods, telecom and cement stocks participated. Therefore, even if Reliance fails to participate tomorrow, no steep fall is likely. However, a 50-100 point downmove may be on the cards as RSI stands at 71, which indicates that Nifty is in an overbought zone. However, every dip should be used as a buying opportunity,” said Michael Pillai, technical analyst at Nirmal Bang Securities.
National Stock Exchange’s Nifty settled at 4965.55, up 7.15 points or 0.14 per cent after the index surged to a high of 5003.05 intra-day and later touched a low of 4944.15.
Bombay Stock Exchange’s Sensex ended at 16,711.11, higher by 34.07 points or 0.2 per cent from the previous close. The index touched a high of 16,820.02 and low of 16,636.55 intraday.
The broader market eked out marginal gains as well. The BSE Midcap Index closed up 0.27 per cent and BSE Smallcap Index finished 0.13 per cent higher.
Sectorwise, the BSE IT Index climbed 1.91 per cent, BSE Auto advanced 1.46 per cent, BSE Bankex rose 0.78 per cent while BSE Oil&Gas Index lost 2.86 per cent.
Biggest index losers comprised BPCL (-5.07%), Reliance Industries (5%), Unitech (-3.48%), Tata Steel (-2.08%) and Reliance Capital (-2.19%).
HCL Technologies (5.74%), ACC (3.6%), Hindalco Industries (3.55%), Grasim Industries (2.56%) and Maruti Suzuki (2.43%) were the gainers.
Market breadth on BSE deteriorated with 1,574 declines outnumbering 1,223 advances.
On the data front, after remaining in negative zone for 13 consecutive weeks, India’s annual rate of inflation was back to positive at 0.12 per cent for the week ended Sep 5 from minus 0.12 percent the week before.
Meanwhile, Asian stocks hit their highest level in 13 months on signs that the global economy is on the road to recovery while the US dollar slid to a fresh one-year low.
–Agencies