Benchmark indices marked their lifetime closing highs on Wednesday as foreign institutional investors? (FIIs) year to date (YTD) purchases crossed the $12-billion-mark. The 30-share Sensex is on its longest winning streak in nearly 2 years as it ended in the green for the seventh consecutive session.
On Wednesday, the FIIs bought shares worth $110.57 million, while domestic institutional investors sold shares worth $49.50 million, according to provisional data on the exchanges. FIIs have now been net buyers in each of the last six sessions.
On Wednesday, the Sensex ended higher by 121.53 points, or 0.47%, to close at 26,147.33 points on the Bombay Stock Exchange while the broader 50-share Nifty gained 27.90 points, or 0.36%, to close at 7,795.75 points.
The market rally was led by Infosys, which gained 3.46% after the IT major said that it has struck a multi-year deal with German auto giant Daimler for management of infrastructure services and data centres.
Hindalco (2.58%), TCS (2.21%), Wipro (1.87%) and ICICI Bank (1.52%) were other major gainers among the Sensex scrips.
Among its peers, most of the Asian markets edged higher on Wednesday. The Hang Seng (0.80%), Straits Times (0.72%), Jakarta Composite (0.48%), Shanghai Composite (0.14%) and Taiwan Taiex (0.62%) ended in the green.
On the domestic front, 17 of the 30 Sensex stocks ended in the green on Wednesday.
In the broader market, breadth was weak with 1,706 stocks on the BSE ending
lower compared with 1,265
advances.
Most of the 13 BSE sectoral indices ended in the green. The BSE IT rose the most as it ended 2.24%. BSE Consumer Durables (0.37%), BSE Bankex (0.24%) and BSE Capital Goods (0.13%) were among other gainers.
The NSE cash turnover on Wednesday stood at R16,186.88 crore while the turnover in the futures & options segment stood at R2.38 lakh crore.
Global fund manager continue to remain overweight on India. ?Our marketing trip reaffirmed GEM funds are overweight on India and have been raising their OW in India constantly. Investors believe that the Indian growth story clearly stands out amongst the emerging markets universe,? BofA-ML said in a report.
Experts say Indian markets are poised to perform well even if the new government fails to deliver.
?We maintain our view that the Indian market has been driven by improving risk appetite globally as well as a bottoming out of growth, and not just the change in government. Thus, while some in the market may be disappointed by the pace of change driven by the new government, the broader market is likely to still do well,? Credit Suisse said in a report.
