The Indian equity benchmarks extended gains and hit fresh four-month highs on Wednesday led by gains in Reliance Industries, NTPC, ICICI Bank, Larsen & Toubro, Hindustan Unilever and ITC amid stable cues from other Asian markets. The Sensex rose as much as 378 points to reclaim 60,000-mark for the first time since April and Nifty 50 index reclaimed its important psychological level of 17,900.
As of 12:23 pm, the Sensex was up 352 points at 60,208 and Nifty 50 index advanced 105 points to 17,931.
"I think it is a case of history repeating itself. Whenever the Sensex has not entered a bear market, the reversal has been quite quick historically and the same has happened this time also. The icing on the cake is that unlike last time, the valuations are much more reasonable this time around. Although the broader market is by no means cheap, it isn't prohibitively expensive either. Therefore, those looking for fundamentally strong stocks at attractive valuations could still find pockets of undervaluation," said Rahul Shah, co-head of research at Equitymaster.
Most of the Asian markets were trading higher with Japan's Nikkei up 0.8 per cent, Singapore's Straits Times up 0.44 per cent, Hong Kong's Hang Seng up 0.34 per cent and Taiwan Weighted up 0.2 per cent.
Overnight, another choppy day of trading on Wall Street ended on Tuesday with a mostly higher finish for stocks that adds to the market’s recent string of gains.
The S&P 500 rose 0.2 per cent, its third straight gain. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.7 per cent, extending its winning streak to a fifth day. The Nasdaq slipped 0.2 per cent.
Bond yields gained ground. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 2.81 per cent from 2.79 per cent late Monday.
The market’s latest gyrations came as traders cautiously reviewed mostly encouraging financial results from major retailers.
Back home, buying was visible across sectors as 14 of fifteen sector gauges compiled by the National Stock Exchange were trading higher led by the Nifty FMCG index's 0.65 per cent gain. Nifty Auto, Media, Metal, PSU Bank, Healthcare, Consumer Durables, Realty and Oil & Gas indices were also trading higher.
On the other hand, IT shares were witness a mild selling pressure.
Mid- and small-cap stocks were also witnessing buying interest as Nifty Midcap 100 and Nifty Smallcap 100 indices rose 0.5 per cent each.
NTPC was top Nifty gainer, the stock rose 2.3 per cent to Rs 159. Eicher Motors, Hero MotoCorp, HDFC Life, Grasim Industries, Hindustan Unilever, Bharat Petroleum, Shree Cements and Bajaj Finance also rose between 0.75-2.2 per cent.
On the flipside, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, HDFC Bank, Apollo Hospitals, HDFC, Kotak Mahindra Bank and UPL were among the losers.
The overall market breadth was positive as 1,913 shares were advancing while 847 were declining on the BSE.
