Sensex Today: Aggressive buying by domestic funds in the last two trading sessions aided the market sentiment. The S&P BSE Sensex witnessed an intra-day corrective move, wherein the benchmark slipped over 200 points to touch a low of 65,601. The recovery, thereafter, was swifter with index heavyweight Reliance and metal stocks flexing their muscles. The Sensex hit a high of 65,832, and eventually ended 152 points up at 65,780.
In the process, the Sensex has now gained 949 points in the last three straight trading days.
The NSE Nifty touched a high of 19,587, and settled with a gain of 46 points at 19,575.
Among the Sensex 30 shares, Sun Pharma gained 2 per cent. ITC, Titan, Bajaj Finance, Nestle, Infosys and Larsen & Toubro were up over a per cent each. On the other hand, UltraTech Cement and Maruti were the prominent losers.
In the broader market, the BSE MidCap index jumped over 1 per cent, while the SmallCap advanced 0.6 per cent. Overall, near about 2,150 shares advanced as against 1,525 declining stocks on the BSE.
Sectorally, the BSE Healthcare index gained 1.3 per cent. Energy and Realty indices were up around a per cent each.
Nifty MidCap breaches 40,000 mark
Bull run in mid-cap and small-cap stocks seems to be far from slowing down, despite concerns raised by analysts, with the Nifty Midcap 100 index charging past the 40,000 mark for the first time and the Nifty SmallCap index scaling a fresh all-time high on September 5.
Bulls in the small-cap and mid-cap space seem to have braved the caution sounded out by several brokerages over higher valuations. Nirmal Bang Equities CEO Rahul Arora suggests that the market is facing a shortage of attractive investment opportunities, as many decent stocks have been bought up and are no longer available at lower prices. As a result, investors are crafting stories for stocks they wouldn’t typically consider, leading to previously overlooked stocks suddenly becoming expensive.
Kotak Institutional Equities recently acknowledged the broad-based rally but remains uncertain about the factors behind for the rally and the divergent performance across sectors.
Certain sectors in the mid-cap and small-cap space deserve a re-rating, Kotak said in a report, referring to smaller private banks, healthcare services (hospitals) and real estate, as they had reasonable valuations prior to the rally and threw up a strong outlook. It was challenging to understand the rally in smaller consumption and IT services stocks, the brokerage said.
“This is particularly puzzling, considering the ongoing weak domestic demand in the consumption sector and the diminishing global demand for IT services,” the report said.
