Sensex starts Christmas week on a firm note, ends 217 pts higher

Key benchmark indices, Sensex & Nifty, started off the Christmas week on a firm note, with the markets gaining strength from other Asian counterparts while optimism in major European gauges gave investors the extra push to cover their short positions. [caption id=“attachment_2554322” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Reuters[/caption] With uncertainty over the US Fed rate hike now over, investors lapped up banking, metal, realty and power shares, driving the Sensex scale past 25,700-mark to an intra-day high of 25,757.84, up 239 points. Monday, the 30-share BSE S&P Sensex finally ended the session with gains of 216.68 points or 0.8 percent from previous close at 25,735.90. The broader 50-stock CNX Nifty closed the day at 7,834.45, up 72.50 points, or 0.9 percent higher. In fact, the markets faltered sharply in the first few minutes of the opening bill with Sensex dropping 105 points to the day’s low of 25,413.54 before witnessing a sharp turnaround to stay firm thereafter. Market breadth ended positive with 1,792 stocks advancing against 909 declines on BSE. Other Asian indices such as China’s Shanghai Composite surged 1.8 percent while Hang Seng was up 0.2 percent even as Japan’s Nikkei eased 0.4 percent. In the European pack, Germany’s DAX was the biggest gainer, rising 1.4 percent while FTSE and CAC were up over 0.5 percent each in mid-noon trades. Market experts said the upsurge in the market is largely due to support from domestic mututal funds as most of the foreign investors are already in a vacation mood. “Most of the global players are on vacation now and domestic investors are supporting the market with buying action in mid-caps, so the markets seem more favourable,” said a Reuters report quoting Deven Choksey, managing director, K R Choksey Securities. In one of the largest fund infusion in the domestic equities, mutual funds have pumped in Rs 69,655 crore in 2015 so far. Foreign institutional investors, who have been net buyers so far this year, have offloaded Rs 4,932 crore worth of equities this month. Among the major gainers in the Sensex space, shares of ICICI Bank rose 3.2 percent to Rs 258.20, ONGC gained 3.1 percent to Rs 230.30, ITC added 2.7 percent to Rs 325.75, M&M moved up 2.6 percent to Rs 1,277.15, HeroMoto Corp jumped 2.4 percent to Rs 2,704 and Axis Bank was up 2.1 percent at Rs 441.45. Others such as SBI, Infosys, Tata Steel, Dr Reddy’s, ITC, Coal India and Lupin were up over 1 percent each.