Rating agency Fitch on Tuesday downgraded the US government's top credit rating to AA+ from AAA, citing fiscal deterioration over the next three years and repeated debt ceiling negotiations. The development caused a flutter across equity markets, with most leading frontline global equity indices trading weak. Back home, the S&P BSE Sensex and the Nifty50 lost over 1 per cent each in intra-day deals to hit a low of 65,751.53 and 19,517.55 levels, respectively.
Hero MotoCorp was the top gainer in the Sensex pack, spurting 4.46 per cent. IndusInd Bank, Tata Motors, Vedanta, SBI, M&M, Sun Pharma, Tata Steel, HDFC and HDFC Bank too rose up to 3.63 per cent.
The benchmark Sensex is 2.4 per cent shy of a new lifetime high but the market capitalisation (m-cap) of all companies listed on the BSE is already in the record books. At Thursday's (August 18) closing price, the total m-cap of 4,776 firms on the BSE stood at Rs 280.5 trillion, surpassing the previous high of Rs 280 trillion on January 17. This, even if the Nifty Midcap 100 is currently 5.4 per cent below its lifetime high, while the Nifty Smallcap 100 index is down over 20 per cent.
Earnings growth, attractive valuations and change in FPI flows from negative to positive over the next 12 months are some of the key triggers for an upside. "A poor monsoon, high inflation and further rate hike are some of the key risks
Among the Sensex firms, Wipro, HCL Technologies, NTPC, Reliance Industries, Infosys, IndusInd Bank, Tech Mahindra and Tata Consultancy Services were the major laggards. IT stocks fell on profit-taking after rallying sharply in the past two sessions. Tata Steel, Titan, Maruti, Larsen & Toubro, ITC and JSW Steel were among the gainers.
RIL plunged around 4% after scaling its life-time high of Rs 1,978.50 as investors rushed to book profits after the company's AGM. Bharti Airtel, ONGC, IndusInd Bank, Bajaj Finance and SBI were also among the laggards. On the other hand, shares of Infosys rallied around 6 per cent ahead of its quarterly earnings. HCL Tech, TCS, Tech Mahindra, Axis Bank and HUL too ended with robust gains.
Benchmark indices continued to rally for the third day running on Friday with the Sensex climbing 619 points in early trade to reclaim the 57,000 level. The 30-share BSE benchmark jumped 619.27 points to 57,477.06. The broader NSE Nifty advanced 189.15 points to 17,118.75.
The NSE Nifty ended with a gain of 113 points at 6143.
Gold prices surged by Rs 150 to trade at Rs 17,140 per ten gram in New Delhi on heavy buying due to a steep rise in the metal's prices in the overseas market as the dollar weakened.
'While Indian markets are indeed not inexpensive, the valuations of largecap stocks are still a considerable distance from being overstretched.'
The rally was owing to Central Banks (ECB, US Fed, BoE, Central Banks of Canada, Japan and Switzerland) liquidity move to get dollars at subsidised rates.
The market players are expected to react to the better than expected factory output data for the month of August, which revealed that the industrial production grew by 6.4%.
