Markets at record highs; Adani Group shares surge

Markets continued to trade near record highs on buying across the board by foreign funds

Markets continued to trade near record highs as institutional investors bought stocks across the board on hopes that the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley would announce fiscal consolidation measures in the upcoming Budget.

At 1:05PM the 30-share Sensex was up 266 points at 25,783 and the 50-share Nifty was up 75 points at 7,710.


The Finance Minister on Tuesday hinted at taking bold measures by discarding populism to curtail wasteful expenditure and making "reasonable" tax policies to revive economic growth.

The Indian rupee was trading higher at Rs 59.87 compared to the previous close of Rs 60.07 tracking sharp gains in domestic stock markets.

Asian markets were trading higher with the Hang Seng outperforming the region. Japan's benchmark Nikkei ended up 0.3% while Hang Seng was up 1.2%, Shanghai COmposite was up 0.4% and Straits Times was up 0.5%.

All sectoral indices on the BSE were trading higher between 0.9-1.6% each except for the IT index which was marginally down tracking weakness in Infosys.

Capital Goods, Banks, Auto and Metals were among the top sectoral gainers on the BSE.

Bank shares firmed up on hopes that pick up in economic activity would lead to higher credit growth. HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, SBI, Axis Bank were up 0.6-1.7% each while Mortgage lender was up 1.6% contributing the most to the Sensex gains.

Other Sensex gainers include, L&T, Reliance Industries, ITC and Tata Motors among others.

However, Hindalco was trading flat with negative bias on profit taking after recent gains while Infosys was down 0.3% after Gartner in a report lowered its global IT spending growth forecast.

Among other shares, Shares of Adani Group companies are back into limelight and trading higher by up to 10% on back of heavy volumes. All three listed entities – Adani Enterprises, Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone (SEZ) and Adani Power are up 4-10% on the National Stock Exchange (NSE).

Gujarat Gas Company zoomed 7.6% to Rs 533 on the BSE after Gujarat Finance Minister Saurabh Patel announced that the above mentioned company and Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation (GSPC) will be merged this year.

In the broader market, the BSE Mid-cap and Small-cap indices were up 1% each.

Market breadth was strong with 1,814 gainers and 1,038 losers on the BSE.