The Green Extravaganza of Nifty and Sensex

The benchmark index of BSE, Sensex and of NSE, Nifty bounced back from the previous session’s lows (low made by breaking the low of multiple months) to trade nearly 1 per cent higher on Tuesday. This is helped by short-covering in stocks such as Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd and Tata Steel Ltd, while the broader sentiment was from the positive global cues.

At 1.25 PM, the 30-share BSE index Sensex was up by 339.59 points or 1.23 per cent at 27,869.56 and the 51 share NSE index Nifty was up by 112.25 points or 1.32 per cent at 8,632.65.

Except the oil & gas, all other BSE sectoral indices were trading in the green zone. Among them, banking index gained the most by 1.42 per cent, realty 1.4 per cent, capital goods 1.26 per cent and healthcare 1.21 per cent, while oil & gas index was down 0.08 per cent.

Top five Sensex gainers were ICICI Bank (+3.64 per cent), Adani Ports (+3.25 per cent), HDFC (+2.85 per cent), Tata Steel (+2.45 per cent) and Bajaj Auto (+1.87 per cent), while the major losers were Asian Paints (-1.1 per cent), ONGC (-0.45 per cent) and GAIL (-0.05 per cent).

Among the gainers, Tata Steel rose 2.5 per cent after falling nearly 2 per cent in the last three sessions, while Zee Entertainment ltd gained 2.2 per cent after shedding 12 per cent in the previous four sessions.

Housing Development Finance Corp was up by 2.3 per cent after declining about 9 per cent in the last seven sessions.

Logistics companies such as Gati Ltd as well as Allcargo Logistics Ltd rose 3.4 per cent and 2.1 per cent, respectively, ahead of the GST Council meeting.

Shriram EPC jumped 12.2 per cent after the engineering services company said it got an order worth over Rs. 61 crores (US$ 9.16 million) from the Karnataka Water Authority.

But Zensar Technologies dropped 2.2 per cent after its September-quarter profit slumped nearly 41 per cent.

Indian markets were weak in yesterday’s trading session where Nifty saw a fall of 105 points from its previous High. This weakness continued despite the positive news in the Indian banking sector about the deleveraging of the Essar group. The Essar Group has announced that it would sell its stake in Essar oil and use the funds to pay off its debt amounting Rs 90,000 Crores.

This bounce back brought a sense of relief to many as they feared a further fall since the psychological barrier of 8600.