Sensex Above 38,300, Nifty Breaches 11,550 For The First Time Ever

The domestic stock market traded on firm footing as both the key equity benchmarks hit fresh highs on Monday. After opening above the crucial 11,500 mark for the first time ever, the Nifty hit a record high of 11,562.95. The S&P BSE Sensex also reached a fresh peak of 38,329.90. At 2:10 pm, the Sensex traded at 38,309.87, up 361.99 points or 0.95 per cent and the Nifty50 at 11,560.25, with a gain of 89.50 points or 0.78 per cent. The previous intra-day high of the Sensex was 38,076.23 and that of the Nifty was 11,493.25 registered on August 9.

Thirty-five out of 50 Nifty stocks advanced in trade.

The top five Nifty gainers were Larsen & Toubro (up 6.87 per cent), Tata Motors (up 4.61 per cent), ONGC (up 3.07 per cent), Tata Steel (up 2.85 per cent), and Reliance Industries (up 2.59 per cent).

Even in the 30-share Sensex pack, L&T, Tata Motors, ONGC and Tata Steel were among the top five gainers. L&T, HDFC, Reliance Industries contributed the most to Sensex's gains.

Infosys shares, however, tanked over 3 per cent and were the top losers on both Sensex and Nifty after the company announced that Chief Financial Officer MD Ranganath will step down.

All sectoral indices barring the Nifty IT index traded with gains. Nifty Metal gained 1.93 per cent, Nifty Pharma 1.17 per cent and Nifty PSU Bank index 1.02 per cent.

Meanwhile, Asian share markets crept cautiously higher as investors awaited developments on proposed Sino-US trade talks and the Chinese yuan rallied away from dangerous lows, stated a Reuters report.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan gained 0.4 per cent, while Shanghai blue chips firmed 0.2 per cent.

Moves were modest with Japan's Nikkei off 0.3 per cent in thin trade, while EMini futures for the S&P 500 edged up 0.05 per cent.

The yuan reached its highest in a week at 6.8512 per dollar as Beijing acted to prevent a test of the psychologically important 7.0000 level.

On Friday, Nifty50 closed at a record 11,470.75 level while the Sensex at 37,947.88. Provisional NSE data showed that foreign portfolio investors and domestic institutional investors bought net shares of Rs 147.31 crore and Rs 151.89 crore respectively in the previous session. (With Reuters inputs)