Shares responded to Barack Obama’s re-election by ending the day marginally in the green.
The Nifty closed at 5,760, up 36 points, while the Sensex closed at 18,902, up 85 points.
Marketmen are expecting benchmark indices to surge further on what they call a technical bounce.
“The gain in the Nifty is a reflection of the optimism that the quantitative easing measures would continue under Obama’s regime,” said Amar Ambani, Head of Research, IIFL.
Experts said that Indian companies with US operations would have to hire more locals to portray the image of a good corporate citizen.
“The cost arbitrage that manpower from India gave earlier has come down drastically,” said E. Balaji, MD &CEO Randstad India, an executive search firm. “Earlier an Indian national would cost one-fifth of an American hire, but today the cost is between 40 and 50 per cent of an American hire. However, US companies will still be driven by ‘best job done at the best possible cost’,” he said.
FIIs bought equity worth Rs 728 crore in the net, while DIIs were net sellers of Rs 197 crore of equity. Retail investors were also net sellers of equity worth Rs 69 crore.
Volatility was down 4.6 per cent; the volatility index, India Vix closed at 14.51.
JP Associates, Bank of Baroda, Punjab National Bank, IDFC and DLF were the top five Nifty gainers while Tata Power, Coal India, RIL, Bharti Airtel and Siemens were the top losers.
Meanwhile, the European Commission revised its 2013 GDP growth forecast for the Euro area from one per cent to 0.1 per cent.
It also said that unemployment in the EU was expected to remain very high.
The Dow Jones was at 13,246 (at the going to print), up 1.02 per cent; yield on US 10-year treasury was at 1.64 per cent, up 11 basis points. Gold was up 0.5 per cent at $1723.8 an ounce.
Nymex crude oil futures were quoting at $87.68 to a barrel, down 1.16 per cent. The Euro shed 0.5 per cent and was at $1.2751 to a Euro.
raghavendrarao.k@thehindu.co.in