Sensex soars 250 points, financials rally

Markets opened on a positive note this Wednesday on back of short-covering witnessed in banking shares, after the central bank announced steps to support the beaten-down bond market and to prop up the battered rupee.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Tuesday signalled a partial relaxation in its tight money policy, adopted a month ago. The move is aimed at cooling the domestic bond yields, which have risen about 190 basis points since the liquidity-tightening measures were announced on July 15.

At 9:20AM, 30-share Sensex rose 246  points to trade at 18,485 and the 50-share Nifty gained 84 points at 5,485 levels.

Foreign institutional investors sold Rs 14.2 billion of cash shares on Tuesday, exchange data showed, while domestic institutions were net buyers of Rs 10.66 billion of shares.

The broader markets were mixed with mid-caps falling 0.4 per cent while small-caps rose 0.2 per cent on the BSE.

The market breadth was positive. Out of 544 stocks traded, 464 stocks advanced while 69 stocks declined on the BSE.

RUPEE

The rupee on Wednesday opened lower against the dolla but recovered a tad. The partially convertible currency traded at 63.20 from previous close of 63.23 against the dollar in early trades on the Interbank Foreign Exchange market.

GLOBAL MARKETS

Asia’s benchmark stock index fell for a fifth day to trade at the lowest level in six weeks before the release of minutes of the Federal Reserve’s July meeting.

Japan’s Nikkei was down 0.7% to 13,295, Singapore’s Straits Times fell 0.3% to 3,118, China’s Shanghai Composite index dropped 0.2%  at 2,069 while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng shed 1% to 21,739 today.

Investors will be watching the release of the Federal Open Market Committee’s July meeting minutes today for hints as to when the stimulus withdrawal will begin.

STOCK MOVERS

Domestically, barring IT index, all the key sectoral indices gained with banks, FMCG, capital goods, realty, power lead rise on the BSE.

The gainers included bank shares such as SBI and ICICI Bank gaining 3.2%  and 5% respectively, HDFC Bank rose 4%, HDFC was up 2% on the BSE.

The laggards were Wipro falling 0.6%, NTPC declined 0.4%, Coal India was down 0.2% while Infosys fell 0.07% on the BSE.