Key indices rebound after 5-day losing streak; RIL leads charge

Mumbai: Benchmark indices bounced back on Wednesday after falling for five straight sessions, with investors snapping up the recently-mauled IT, finance and consumption stocks amid a supportive trend overseas. A rebounding rupee further bolstered sentiment, traders said. Halting its five-session slide, BSE Sensex jumped 574.35 points or 1.02 per cent to finish at 57,037.50. Similarly, the NSE Nifty surged 177.90 points or 1.05 per cent to 17,136.55. The market breadth was in favour of the bulls, with 20 of the 30 Sensex stocks closing in the green.

"With support from recovery in beaten-down HDFC stocks and the IT sector, the market countered yesterday's selloff. Foreign investors are pumping out funds in large quantities, while support from DIIs is helping the market to partially balance the pressure. A similar level of volatility can be expected to continue until global uncertainties settle down leading to a softening of FII selling," said Vinod Nair, head (research) at Geojit Financial Services.

S Hariharan, head (sales trading), Emkay Global Financial Services, adds: "A series of sharp negative reactions to minor misses in earnings from large caps (Infosys and HDFC Bank) point to a precarious state of positioning among investors. Under-weight positioning in energy and materials sectors and over-weight positioning in IT and consumer-facing sectors across both DII and FII investors has served to accentuate under-performance by active strategies."

Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) continued their selling spree, offloading shares worth a net Rs 5,871.69 crore on Tuesday, according to stock exchange data. As per the latest available data, foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) pulled out equities worth Rs9,345 crore from Indian markets in April.

UltraTech Cement topped the Sensex gainers' chart with a jump of 3.52 per cent, followed by Asian Paints, Maruti, Reliance Industries, TCS, Bharti Airtel, HUL and HDFC. In value terms, index heavyweight Reliance Industries accounted for almost half of the benchmark's gains. In contrast, Bajaj Finance, ICICI Bank, Bajaj Finserv, Tata Steel, ITC and L&T were among the prominent laggards, dropping as much as 3.35 per cent.

The BSE midcap index gained 0.45 per cent, while the smallcap gauge jumped 0.36 per cent. As many as 1,738 stocks advanced, while 1,662 declined and 110 remained unchanged. Among BSE sectoral indices, auto gained the most by 2.21 per cent, followed by energy (2.19 per cent), oil and gas (1.85 per cent) and telecom (1.40 per cent), while metal (0.41 per cent), utilities (0.18 per cent) and bank (0.17 per cent) were among the losers.