The Indian stock market indices soared to new lifetime peaks on Thursday afternoon with BSE Sensex crossing the 83,000 milestone for the first time while the Nifty surges to a record high of 25,433 points.
Sensex closed for the day at 82,962.71 after zooming 1,439.55 points or 1.77 per cent while Nifty 50 settled at 25,388.90 with a rise of 470.45 points or 1.89 per cent. Around 2,228 stocks saw a surge compared to 1,564 shares plunging while 103 remained flat.
Market heavyweights like Bharti Airtel, NTPC, JSW Steel, Mahindra & Mahindra, Adani Ports, Tech Mahindra, Larsen & Toubro, Tata Steel, State Bank of India and Kotak Mahindra Bank were the top Sensex gainers of the day. Bharti Airtel was up 4.37 per cent when the market closed. Nifty Bank, which saw a bleak performance earlier in the week, also added to the recovery and the index itself breached 51,500 mark. The only laggard in the 30-stock BSE benchmark index was Nestle.
One of the major reasons for the rally was the performance of global peers including the Wall Street and European markets. In Asian markets, Seoul, Tokyo and Hong Kong closed with major gains. Foreign Institutional Investors also bought considerable amount of equities worth Rs 1,755 crore on Wednesday.
This coupled with the buzz around rate cuts by the US Fed and the Chinese central bank are the key reasons for the sudden rally. The August figures of the US consumer prices had increased slightly, with core inflation seeing a 0.28 per cent rise. This is seen as a positive sign as the figures helped bring down the one-year inflation to 2.5 per cent from the earlier 2.9 per cent. This will in turn increase the chances of a Fed rate cut of 25 bps soon.
On Wednesday, Sensex slumped 398.13 points to settle at 81,523.16 while Nifty 50 plummeted 122.65 points to 24,918.45.
