Market Wrap Podcast, January 10: All that happened in the markets today

Defying weak global cues and surging coronavirus cases domestically, equity markets soared on Monday with the Nifty50 index reclaiming its crucial 18,000-mark by closing.

The 50-pack index hit an intra-day high of 18,017, before settling 1% higher at 18,003. Meanwhile, the BSE Sensex ended at 60,396, up by 651 points or 1.09%.

UPL, Hero MotoCorp, Titan, Maruti Suzuki, Tata Motors, SBI, and L&T were the top gainers on the Nifty, while Wipro, Divis Labs, Nestle India, Tata Consumer Products, Asian Paints, and Power Grid remained the top drags.

In the broader markets, the BSE MidCap index added 0.7%, while the BSE SmallCap index gained 1.2%

"Surging Covid cases are being ignored by markets globally since lockdowns and restrictions on economic activity are not expected. The domestic equity market expects the Q3 results starting this week to be very good, particularly for IT and financials and it is discounting good results in advance", said Dr. VK Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Financial Services.

Among sectors, the Nifty PSU Bank index was the leading outperformer with a 3.3% rally on the NSE. Among individual shares, Bank of Baroda, PNB, and Canara Bank rose up to 5% amid media reports that the government may consider increasing FDI limits in the sector during Budget 2022.

Nifty Auto and Realty indices, too, put up a strong show with both closing 1.9% higher. From the latter, Sunteck Realty ended over 13% up after the company reported a 29% sequential jump in pre-sales at Rs 352 crores for the December quarter. Oberoi Realty, too, surged over 3% on robust bookings for the said quarter.

Now coming to some of the other top developments of the day --

Share price of Paytm parent One97 Communications fell over 6% and hit a new low on the BSE after global brokerage Macquarie reduced its target price on the stock to Rs 900. With today's slide, the share of the company has fallen 45% against its issue price of Rs 2,150 per share.

Meanwhile, economists, including those at Citigroup Inc, India Ratings & Research, and ICICI Bank have lowered their GDP estimates after official data Friday showed that India's GDP will likely expand by 9.2% in the current fiscal -- slower than the 9.5% previously projected by the RBI.

Lastly, according to a research note by Goldman Sachs, the US Federal Reserve will likely raise interest rates four times this year and will start its balance sheet runoff process in July.