Sensex zooms by 685 points.
By Rajiv Theodore
NEW DELHI: The stock market never had it so good in the recent past. On Thursday, the Sensex of the BSE zoomed 685 points as part of the global rally in equities, to a three year high on brisk buying after the Fed’s decision to leave stimulus untouched. This euphoria was also in anticipation that it would goad the Reserve Bank of India to ease the monetary policy on Friday. The fears of immediate FII outflows lessened after the Federal Reserve decided to maintain status quo on its monthly $85 billion bond-buying program.
The rupee was also trading at 61.8 versus the dollar, up over 150 paise, when stock markets closed for the day. The Sensex was on the verge of a recovery over the past four days and spurted 684.48 points Thursday to end at 20,646.64, a level seen on November 10, 2010.
Banking stocks also contributed to the climb with the likes of stocks including ICICI Bank, ITC, HDFC Bank, HDFC, L&T and SBI, RIL, ONGC, Tata Motors, Bharti Airtel, Tata Steel. Overall in BSE, 1430 stocks rose while 997 stocks fell.
The 50-share National Stock Exchange index surged 216.10 points, or 3.66 per cent to 6,115.55, after touching a high of 6,145.50. Also, SX40 index, the flagship index of MCX-SX, closed at 12,232.1, up 430.52 points or 3.65 per cent.
The banking index gained the most by rising 6.78 per cent as the 13 constituents surged by up to 23 per cent. SBI shot up by 8.07 per cent, ICICI Bank by 6.55 per cent, HDFC Bank by 5.13 per cent and Yes Bank by 22.54 per cent.
The global markets gave a thumbs-up to Ben Bernanke’s announcement that he would wait for proof of solid economic growth before any winding down of the bond buying program of $85 billion a month is initiated. The impact has been felt globally with Dow Jones, the Asian markets, the BSE Sensex and the Nifty and the European markets all rallying, probably relieved that the markets would not witness any sell-off deluge.
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