Benchmarks hit day's high; Sensex reclaims 50k mark

Domestic equity benchmarks extended early gains and hit the day's high in morning trade. The Nifty was trading above the 14,800 mark and the Sensex regained the 50,000 mark. Banks, financials, metals and industrials shares were in demand.

At 10:24 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, was up 337.47 points or 0.68% to 50,088.88. The Nifty 50 index added 112.65 points or 0.77% to 14,820.45.

Global stocks advanced after Fed Chair Jerome Powell indicated that the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) was nowhere close to pulling back on its support from the economy as it will still take sometime for it to achieve the employment and inflation goals.

In the broader market, the S&P BSE Mid-Cap index gained 0.68% while the S&P BSE Small-Cap index rose 0.99%.

The market breadth was strong. On the BSE, 1695 shares rose and 742 shares fell. A total of 128 shares were unchanged.

COVID-19 Update:

Total COVID-19 confirmed cases worldwide stood at 112,091,851 with 2,484,988 deaths. India reported 146,907 active cases of COVID-19 infection and 156,567 deaths, according to the data from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India.

Buzzing Index:

The S&P BSE Industrials index rose 1.08% to 4178.6. Dredging Corporation of India (up 13.32%), Snowman Logistics (up 9.77%), Voltamp Transformers (up 8.24%), MSTC (up 7.32%) and Shipping Corporation of India (up 7.02%) advanced.

Stocks in Spotlight:

Tata Consumer Products will replace GAIL (India) in the benchmark Nifty 50 index from 31 March 2021. Consequently, Tata Consumer Products was up 0.72% to Rs 631.65 while GAIL (India) was down 0.68% at Rs 146.35.

Tata Power Company gained 2.34% to Rs 94.15. The power producer said that it had raised Rs 900 crore by allotting 9,000 unsecured, redeemable, taxable, listed, rated NCDs on private placement basis.

NTPC rose 0.92% to Rs 104.50. The state-run enterprise executed a share purchase agreement with GAIL (India) to buy its 25.51% shareholding in Ratnagiri Gas & Power and exit from Konkan LNG subsequently.

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