The benchmark indices ended marginally higher on Tuesday after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) unveiled its monetary policy, which was termed as ?cautious? by analysts.
The RBI left the repo rate unchanged. ?The tone of RBI?s commentary was one of caution, emphasising the potential upside pressures on retail inflation. In fact, we think the move of reducing banks? LAF repo borrowing limit (at 8%) and to switch the same to term repos (at 8-9%, based on auctions) will result in a marginal tightening in near-term interest rates,? Barclays analysts said in report on Tuesday.
The BSE benchmark, the BSE Sensex closed 0.27% or 60.17 points higher to end at its all-time high of 22,446.44 points, while the NSE Nifty closed 0.25% or 16.85 points higher to end at its all-time high of 6,721.5 points.
Among sectoral indices, the BSE IT (1.65%), BSE Oil & Gas (1.09%) and BSE Consumer Durables (1.33%) were the major gainers. Among individual stocks, Wipro (3.30%), * Tata Consultancy Services (2.08%) and Sesa Sterlite (2.08%) were the major gainers on the 30-share Sensex.
Most Asian indices were trading in the green. The Kospi (0.32%), Straits Times (0.31%), Jakarta Composite (2.22%), Taiwan Taiex (0.27%) and Shanghai Composite (0.70%) were the major gainers. The Nikkei (-0.24%) ended in the red. The Chinese purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to 50.3 in March after recording 50.2 in February.
European indices were trading higher. The FTSE (0.63%), DAX (0.63%) and CAC (0.90%) were the major gainers at 6.00 pm IST.