Sensex, Nifty hit record intra-day highs; auto stocks rally

The benchmarks BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty surged to their record intra-day highs in afternoon session Monday tracking gains in auto, IT and financial stocks.

The 30-share index zoomed over 500 points to hit its lifetime peak of 40,254.35. It was trading 516.79 points, or 1.30 per cent, higher at 40,230.99 at 1440 hours.

Similarly, the broader NSE Nifty spurted over 150 points to touch 12,081.85 level for the first time ever. The index was trading 149 points, or 1.25 per cent, up at 12,071.80.

Top Sensex gainers include Hero MotoCorp, Bajaj Auto, Asian Paints, IndusInd Bank, HUL, Maruti, Coal India, HDFC twins, RIL and TCS, rallying up to 5 per cent.

While, ITC, L&T and NTPC slipped up to 0.29 per cent.

According to traders, investors are lapping up stocks amid expectations of an interest rate cut by Reserve Bank of India (RBI) this week.

The RBI may go for another round of rate cut, third in a row, on Thursday to prop up the economic growth which dropped to a five-year low in the final quarter of 2018-19, experts said.

The RBI's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is slated to announce its bi-monthly policy Thursday. The central bank had cut the short-term lending rate (repo rate) by 25 basis points each in its last two policy reviews.

The MPC headed by RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das will meet for three days beginning June 3 to firm up the second bi-monthly monetary policy of the fiscal.

Meanwhile, foreign institutional investors bought equity worth Rs 676.15 crore on Friday, and domestic institutional investors purchased shares to the tune of Rs 394.09 crore, provisional data available with stock exchanges showed.

Elsewhere in Asia, bourses in China, Japan and Korea were trading on a mixed note in their respective early sessions.

On the currency front, the rupee also appreciated 43 paise to 69.26 against the US dollar.

Brent crude futures, the global oil benchmark, were trading 0.31 per cent lower at 61.83 per barrel.