Mumbai:
Stocks: Both the indices, Sensex and Nifty, ended marginally higher after touching life-time high in a truncated trading week.
This was on strong buying mainly in Realty, Healthcare, Banking and IT sectors despite mild profit-booking from operators in Metal, Power, Auto and Consumer Durable.
The Sensex conquered the 28,000 mark for the first time on expectations of more reforms by the Modi government and a rate cut by the RBI.
Markets were enthused after Finance Minister Arun Jaitley promised reforms in labour, land acquisition and insurance laws and expressed readiness to look at privatisation of some loss-making public sector companies.
Strong foreign capital inflows coupled with higher European cues mainly boosted the domestic market sentiment, even as services sector activity in India stagnated during October amid weaker growth of new orders as per an HSBC survey.
“The fall in crude oil prices will have a positive impact on, among other things, inflation....it will embolden the RBI to cut rates,” said HDFC Securities in a note.
The sensex resumed higher at 27,943.04 and shot up further to an all-time high of 28,010.39 on initial strong buying. However, it declined afterwards to 27,739.56 before concluding the week at 27,868.33, showing a marginal gain of 2.70 points or 0.01 pct.
The CNX 50-share Nifty also moved by 14.80 points or 0.18 per cent to finish at 8,337.00 after touching an all-time high level of 8,365.55 during the week.
