Sensex Gains Over 200 Points, Nifty Hits 10,800

NDTV Profit Team

13 Dec 2018, 09:24 AM IST

Stock Market Today: Forty four Nifty50 stocks traded with gains.

Domestic stock markets jumped on Thursday, a day after retail inflation for November cooled off to a near one-and-a-half year low. The S&P BSE Sensex rose as much as 268.92 points to cross the 36,000 mark, while the the Nifty50 barometer of the National Stock Exchange climbed 78.95 points to 10,816.55. Forty four Nifty50 stocks traded with gains in late morning deals. Indiabulls Housing Finance, Hindustan Petroleum and State Bank of India (SBI) were the top three Nifty gainers.

Advances were led by state-run banking and FMCG stocks. At 11:27 am, the Sensex was trading 162.19 points higher at 35,941.26 while the Nifty was up 49.20 points at 10,786.80. The Nifty PSU Bank index was up 1.5 per cent. Other prominent gainers included Indian Bank and Bank of India, trading 4.84 and 1.81 per cent higher.

IT stocks were, however, under pressure as the rupee gained 31 paise to 71.70 against the US dollar.

Investor sentiment on Dalal Street was positive on expectation that new Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das would work more closely with the government, a report by news agency Press Trust of India quoted traders as saying.

Asian shares and the pound moved higher as investors breathed a sigh of relief after British Prime Minister Theresa May survived a no-confidence vote, and as China appeared to be taking more steps to meet US demands to open its markets.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was up 0.2 per cent in early Asian trade after US stocks finished the previous session higher.

On Wednesday, official data showed that inflation in November fell to a 17-month low of 2.33 per cent, driven by falling food prices. below the central bank's medium term target of 4 per cent. This marked the fourth straight month in which retail inflation stood below the central bank's medium-term goal of 4 per cent.

In the previous session, on a net basis, foreign portfolio investors sold shares worth Rs 1,299.43 crore while domestic institutional investors were bought shares to the tune of Rs 1,121.29 crore, provisional data available with BSE showed. The share market had registered strong gains on Wednesday, with the Sensex and Nifty ending 2.3 per cent and 2.4 per cent higher respectively. (With agency inputs)