Sensex jumps 950 points; VIX cools off 8%

Key barometers gained momentum and scaled fresh intraday high in early afternoon trade. The Nifty ascended towards 8600 mark. At 12:26 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, was up 942.87 points or 3.32% at 29,383.19. The Nifty 50 index was up 272.9 points 3.3% at 8,554.

The broader market underperformed the benchmark indices. The S&P BSE Mid-Cap index was up 1.86% while the S&P BSE Small-Cap index was up 1.73%.

The market breadth, indicating the overall health of the market, was strong. On the BSE, 1322 shares rose and 673 shares fell. A total of 156 shares were unchanged. In Nifty 50 index, 46 stocks advanced while 4 stocks declined.

Derivatives:

The NSE's India VIX, a gauge of market's expectation of volatility over the near term, slumped 7.44% to 66.535. The Nifty April 2020 futures were trading at 8,575.05, a premium of 29.75 points compared with the spot at 8,545.30.

On the options front, the Nifty option chain for 30 April 2020 expiry showed maximum call open interest (OI) of 15.05 lakh contracts at the 9,000 strike price. Maximum put OI of 18.74 lakh contracts was seen at 7,500 strike price.

Buzzing Sector:

The Nifty IT index jumped 3.99% to 12,810. Hexware Technologies (up 8.33%), Wipro (up 6.43%), HCL Technologies (up 6.07%), Just Dial (up 5.23%), Infosys (up 3.42%), TCS (up 3.16%), Tech Mahindra (up 2.94%), Tata Elxsi (up 2.63%) and NIIT Technologies (up 2.47%) were top gainers in IT segment.

Stocks in Spotlight:

Shares of Bharti Airtel were up 2.35% at Rs 439.90. The telecom major announced measures--unrestricted incoming services till 17 April and Rs 10 talk time--to cover more than 80 million low-income mobile customers from the impact of the coronavirus crisis.

Piramal Enterprises shot up 4.10%. The company said that a committee of the board of directors has approved the allotment of 7,500 secured, rated, unlisted, redeemable non-convertible debentures having a face value of Rs 10,00,000 each, aggregating up to Rs 750 crore. Shares of PEL were up 6.58% at Rs 912.

Powered by Capital Market - Live News