Friday Rally: Sensex Surges Over 1300 Points, Nifty Near 24,550

The domestic equity market on Friday surged amid positive global cues, with the rally spreading across largecaps, midcaps and smallcaps. The Japanese yen’s stability and the ebbing of the US recession fears amid favourable retail sales and jobless claims data supported the upmove in the Indian stock market.

The BSE Sensex on Friday surged 1,330.96 points or 1.68 per cent to close at 80,436.84, while the NSE Nifty jumped 397.4 points or 1.65 per cent at 24,541.15.

Index heavyweights Reliance Industries, HDFC Bank, and ICICI Bank aided the market towards upside.

Among the Sensex’s 30 shares, all but one shares closed in the green. The top gainers included Tech Mahindra, Tata Motors, Mahindra & Mahindra, TCS, and UltraTech Cement rising up to 4.02 per cent. However, Sun Pharma closed flat with a marginal fall by 0.03 per cent.

In the broader market, the BSE MidCap Index jumped 1.8 per cent, while the BSE SmallCap Index rose 1.7 per cent.

Ola Electric Mobility on Friday surged 20 per cent shares to hit the upper circuit. Apart from this, recently listed IPOs Brainbees and Unicommerce showed strong move this week.

“The stability of the Japanese yen has been instrumental in driving a global market recovery. Besides that, the strong U.S. retail sales and a decline in weekly jobless claims have helped alleviate fears of a U.S. recession. Further, the market sentiment has improved due to a decrease in US CPI inflation. On the backdrop of these, the Indian IT firms exhibited strong buying interest,” said Vinod Nair, head of research, Geojit Financial Services.

Among IT firms, TCS jumped 2.91 per cent, HCL Tech rose 2.65 per cent, Infosys moved up by 2 per cent. Among midcap IT firms, Coforge up by 2.36 per cent and Birlasoft rose 6.11 per cent.

On the domestic factors, Nair said the Indian CPI inflation rate has fallen below the estimate, signalling optimism. However, challenges such as a drop in WPI inflation, weak IIP, and lukewarm Q1 corporate earnings suggest that market gains may be limited, which is reflected by FIIs maintaining a net seller position.

In Wednesday’s session, FIIs were net sellers by Rs 2,595 crore, while DIIs bought Rs 2,236 crore. Nifty options data suggests a trading range of 24,000-25,000, with 25,000 acting as a key resistance level.

On the technical aspect of the Nifty, Rupak De, senior technical analyst, LKP Securities, said, “Nifty rallied above 24500 after days of consolidating within a 400-500 point range. In the near term, Nifty may continue consolidating within the 24300-24550 range. Only a decisive move above 24550 could trigger a directional up move in the index. A buy-on-dips strategy may be more effective unless Nifty decisively falls below 24300.”