Sensex, Nifty50 rally on the last day of FY23: Reliance Industries, Nestle, Infosys, ICICI Bank and Tata Motors top gainers

• India’s benchmark indices Sensex and Nifty50 closed the last of FY23 on a strong note.
• All the sectoral indices were in the green, led by IT, banks, metals, and oil & gas.
• Blue-chip giants Reliance Industries, Nestle, Infosys, ICICI Bank and Tata Motors emerged as the top gainers on Friday.

India’s benchmark indices Sensex and Nifty50 closed the last of FY23 on a strong note. All the sectoral indices were in the green, led by IT, banks, metals, and oil & gas. Blue-chip giants Reliance Industries, Nestle, Infosys, ICICI Bank and Tata Motors emerged as the top gainers on Friday.

Both the indices closed up nearly 2% up on Friday – while the 30-stock Sensex gained 1,031 points to close FY23 at 58,991, the 50-stock Nifty50 gained 279 points to close at 17,359.

The Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries (RIL) emerged as the top gainer on Friday, after announcing that it has received approval from the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) for the demerger of Jio Financial Services (JFS). Post the demerger, JFS will be listed separately on the stock exchanges, and existing shareholders of Reliance Industries will get one share in JFS for every share of RIL.

Besides, the fact that foreign institutional investors (FIIs) have been buying Indian stocks in the past two sessions has also supported the market sentiment.

“There are signs of the global equity markets, led by the mother market U.S., coming out of the banking contagion fears. The fact that there has been no further bank failures or major stress in the system, is good news for equity markets. Nifty valuations are now reasonable and this has prompted FIIs to turn buyers in the last two days. The market is oversold and this can lead to short-covering and a tactical rally in the near-term,” said Dr. V K Vijayakumar, chief investment strategist at Geojit Financial Services.

Further, markets await data points to arrive next week right from auto sales for March starting tomorrow from April 1, RBI’s monetary policy outcome next week and corporate earnings for March quarter.
Brent crude oil prices continued to remain above the $78 level amid concerns of supply risks from Iraq and lower crude stockpiles in the US.

RBI’s MPC outcome on investors’ minds

The Reserve Bank of India’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is all set to meet next week to take a decision on rate hikes. The banking sector crisis in the US and Europe, and a slowdown in affordable housing uptake could push the MPC to pause rate hikes for the time being. A pause will also give the MPC to gauge the full impact of the rate hikes undertaken so far, according to the analysts at SBI Research.

“The RBI has enough reasons to pause in April. There are concerns of a material slowdown in the affordable housing loan market and financial stability concerns taking centre stage,” said a report by SBI Research.

Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) bought Indian equities for the third consecutive session with ₹357 crore on Friday while domestic institutional investors (DIIs) bought equities worth ₹2,479 crore.

Global markets positive

Markets in the US closed Thursday in the green even after paring their gains marginally after commentary from US Fed officials that inflation still needs to be tackled.

While Dow Jones closed 0.43% higher, S&P 500 gained 0.57%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq was up 0.73%.

Markets in Asia too closed on a positive note on Friday, with KOSPI leading with gains of 0.97%, followed closely by Nikkei 225 which was up 0.93%, Hang Seng up 0.59%. Taiwan Weighted was up 0.12% amid escalating tensions with China, while Shanghai Composite was up 0.36%.

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