Sensex breaches 58,000, Nifty ends above 17,300, fired by oil & gas stocks

Benchmark indices closed at record highs on Friday, led by oil and gas stocks.

The market, which opened on a positive note amid mixed global cues, recorded fresh highs on Friday. A rebound in auto and metal stocks along with gains in heavyweights such as Reliance also helped the market sustain gains. However, FMCG and financials witnessed profit-booking throughout the day.

The BSE Sensex closed at 58,129.95, up 277.41 points or 0.48 per cent, after hitting an all-time high of 58,194.79. It recorded an intraday low of 57,764.07. The Nifty 50, after recording a fresh high of 17,340.10, closed at a record 17,323.60, up 89.45 points or 0.52 per cent. It hit an intraday low of 17,212.20.

Breadth remains positive

The breadth of the market remained positive with 1,726 stocks advancing on the BSE, as compared to 1,473 stocks that declined, while 139 remained unchanged. Furthermore, 335 stocks hit the upper circuit as compared to the 176 stocks that were locked in the lower circuit. Besides, 225 stocks touched a 52-week high level and 16 touched a 52-week low.

'Focus back on quality stocks'

According to Neeraj Chadawar, Head - Quantitative Equity Research, Axis Securities, large caps have been playing a catch-up rally in the last one month, driving the benchmark to higher levels. According to Chadawar, style rotation will be key, moving forwards. As the benchmark indices touch all-time high levels, the market positioning has slowly shifted towards high quality large cap names.

“The market breadth has narrowed in the last one month and the high quality large cap stocks outperformed the broader market. The quality theme is clearly back in focus as we had highlighted this in the last month also, where the market focus was slowly shifting towards the sustainability of the returns. We continue to see the broader market doing well, as the visibility on broad-based earnings is still intact. Quality is an emerging theme that is now visible in the performance of the FMCG index. Allocations are now increasingly shifting towards quality stocks, where the earnings visibility and balance sheet strength are very high,” added Chadawar.

Binod Modi, Head Strategy at Reliance Securities, said, “Notably, Nifty gained about 3.5 per cent this week led mainly by a revival in FII flows following a dovish commentary from the Fed chairman Powell in Jackson Hole Symposium last week and sustained domestic flows, while around Rs 10 lakh crore was accumulated in investors’ wealth during the week.”

Reliance, ONGC, Coal India, Titan and IOC were the top gainers on the Nifty 50, while HDFC Life, Cipla, Bharti Airtel, Hindustan Unilever and HDFC were the top laggards.

According to Vinod Nair, Head of Research at Geojit Financial Services, "Despite mixed global cues, domestic equities continued to raise its bar, recording fresh highs as India continued reporting strong economic numbers. European stocks traded mixed ahead of US jobs data, while concerns over an economic slowdown in China fanned investor worries. The Indian Service PMI data rose to 56.7 in August from 45.4 in July on account of the reopening of several establishments and improving demand that boosted sales."

FMCG, financials under pressure

On the sectoral front, a majority of indices closed in the green. While Oil & Gas, metals, auto, realty and consumer durables gained, financials barring PSU Bank and FMCG were under pressure.

Nifty FMCG was down 0.17 per cent. Nifty Bank and Nifty Private Bank were trading 0.19 per cent and 0.23 per cent lower, respectively. Nifty Financial Services was down 0.28 per cent.

Meanwhile, Nifty Oil & Gas was up 2.48 per cent, while Nifty Metal was up 1.17 per cent. Nifty Realty was up 1.06 per cent. Nifty Auto was up 1.02 per cent, while Nifty Consumer Durables closed 1.03 per cent higher.

Broader indices

Midcap and smallcap stocks witnessed further buying as the broader indices closed in the green.

Nifty Midcap 50 was up 0.57 per cent at closing, while the Nifty Smallcap 50 was up 0.47 per cent. The S&P BSE Midcap was up 0.35 per cent, while the S&P BSE Smallcap was up 0.41 per cent.

The volatility index was up 2.12 per cent at 14.54.

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