Sensex closes 257 points up amid GDP optimism; bank stocks lead

The benchmark Sensex climbed 257points on broad-based buying, led by bank stocks, and notchedup its first weekly gain in four amid optimism before therelease of India’s second-quarter GDP data later today.

ICICI Bank, State Bank of India and HDFC Bank shares,along with ITC and Larsen & Toubro, helped to lift the Sensexwhile auto stocks Mahindra & Mahindra and Hero MotoCorpdragged it lower.

Sesa Sterlite and BHEL topped the 25 gainers on the30-share index. All 13 BSE sectoral indices advanced.The S&P BSE Sensex opened stronger at 20,558.93 andsoared to the day’s high of 20,819.77. It ended at 20,791.93,registering a gain of 257.02 points or 1.25 percent.

[caption id=“attachment_1168089” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Reuters[/caption]

“With the RBI’s insistence on bringing down inflationlevels through numerous raises on the repo rate…the marketswill be waiting to see if the RBI’s actions resulted in anadverse impact on economic growth. Anything below a 4.6 percent figure would seem to indicate that the RBI would have a difficult time convincing the market of further repo rateincreases,” said Raghu Kumar, Co-founder of RKSV.

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Over the past five sessions, the Sensex has added 574.54points to clock its first gain after three successive weeks ofdeclines. The index fell 373 points this month, after a recordclose of 21,239.36 on November 3.The 50-share CNX Nifty on the National Stock Exchangerose 84.25 points, or 1.38 per cent, to 6,176.10. The SX40 onthe MCX Stock Exchange closed 159.26 points higher at12,344.49.

Domestic institutional investors bought Rs 330.51 croreof shares and foreign institutional investors purchased a netRs 102.91 crore of stocks yesterday, according to provisionaldata with the stock exchanges.The government was scheduled to release GDP growth datafor the July-September quarter after trading hours.

Asian stocks ended mixed. Key indices in China, Hong Kongand Taiwan gained while they fell in Japan, Singapore andSouth Korea.

PTI