Statsguru: Stock markets attain new peaks; Bajaj Finance, TCS, Infosys gain

On Friday, the Indian stock markets scaled new highs with the benchmark Nifty index ending the day at 11,278, up 111 points from the previous close. The Nifty is now up 8 per cent since the beginning of the year as seen in Chart 1.

The top gainers since January are Bajaj Finance, followed by TCS, Infosys, Bajaj Finserv and Kotak Mahindra Bank. On the other hand, as seen in Chart 2, the top losers are Tata Motors, Vedanta, HPCL, Bharti Airtel and Infratel.

The small-cap and mid-cap indices have underperformed the benchmark index since the beginning of this year, though they have made up some ground of late. As shown in Chart 3, the Nifty mid-cap index has fallen 11 per cent since the beginning of this year, while the small-cap index is down almost 20 per cent.

On the banking side, as seen in Chart 4, public sector banks continue to underperform their private sector counterparts.

The IT sector continues to outperform the broader market driven by strong gains for IT major such as TCS and Infosys (Chart 5).

On the other hand, pharma continues to lag the broader market, as do the NSE realty and infrastructure indices (Chart 6).

The commodity index has also slipped mildly since the beginning of this year (Chart 7).

As shown in Chart 8, foreign portfolio investors have, at the aggregate level, pulled out Rs 75 billion from the equity markets since the beginning of this year, even as domestic institutional investors have pumped in close to Rs 645 billion over the period.
StatsGuru is a weekly feature. Every Monday, Business Standard guides you through the numbers you need to know to make sense of the headlines