Nifty ends above 5500; financials, infra, metals, tech lead
Indian equity benchmarks sustained their upmove for the third consecutive session on Thursday, with the Sensex gaining more than 500 points in three days.
March 25, 2011 / 11:59 IST
Indian equity benchmarks sustained their upmove for the third consecutive session on Thursday, with the Sensex gaining more than 500 points in three days.
Rally in financial, infrastructure, metal, technology and select auto companies' shares supported the index to add nearly 145 points in today's trade. The Nifty closed above the 5500 level for the first time in last six sessions.Ajay Argal, Head Equity Offshore, Birla Sun Life Asset Management Company believes the bias is towards the positive side, citing all the negatives seem to be already priced in. "In spite of such high oil prices - the crude oil prices almost continuing for more than a month - we are still seeing that the Indian markets are not doing too badly and that is because we have already underperformed both the emerging markets as well as the developed markets over the last few weeks. And infact we have underperformed may be for more than 15-16 weeks and the fundamentals have not changed to that extent. We are still expecting 15-18% kind of profit growth with valuations at 15 times, they look very reasonable," he said.The 50-share NSE Nifty gained 42.15 points or 0.77%, to end at 5522.40 and the 30-share NSE Nifty jumped 144.58 points or 0.79%, to settle at 18,350.74 despite the rise in crude oil prices on the NYMEX to USD 106.52 a barrel, with gaining 0.73%.He said, however, "If the oil shoots up to USD 150 or so and it stays there for more than a few weeks then we can have more downturn."Global markets too were quite supportive - European markets and US index futures were trading 0.3-0.8% higher, at the time of closing of Indian equities. Asian markets too gained - Straits Times was up 0.7% and Kospi up 1.2%. Hang Seng and Taiwan rose 0.4% each. Nikkei and Shanghai were flat with negative bias.Emerging markets, Philip Poole, global head-emerging markets, HSBC says, the fundamentals in many respects look a lot better.
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