Bulls go berserk; markets end at record highs

Indian markets came into party mood earlier than expected, while there is still one phase of election to go, traders lapped up shares from all across the board and benchmarks after a muted start, gained momentum rallying around three percent to record highs on Friday, ahead of exit poll results next week. Markets showed a one way movement with not even an iota of profit booking seen throughout the day and the bulls going berserk in the final hours ended only near the high points of the day.

The global cues were not very supportive, and while the US markets ended mostly lower, Asian indices remained in cautious mood as a tense situation in Ukraine prevailed and also after Chinese producer prices slumped more than estimated in April to 1.8 percent from a year earlier and compared with 2.4 percent gain in March. Later the European markets too made a flat-to-soft start, as investors weighed corporate earnings.

Back home, the markets witnessed an unexpected rally to finish the week on a high note, it was a rally led by the bluechips that took the markets out of the week’s slumber. All the heavyweights witnessed good buying interest led by Reliance Industries which moved up by around 4%, nearing Rs 1000 mark after a long time. But the massive rally enveloped all the sectors and all the sections of the market, contributing equally and barring defensive healthcare all the sectoral indices on the BSE ended considerably higher, with banking, realty, power and oil & gas hogging the limelight. Auto sector too moved higher despite Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) reporting that domestic passenger car sales declined by 10.15 per cent to 135,433 units in April compared with 150,737 units in the corresponding month a year-ago. However, the Motorcycle sales last month grew 8.06 per cent to 911,908 units from 843,909 units. There was buzz from the primary markets too, where the Wonderla Holidays marked a marvelous debut, listing at Rs 160, a premium of 28% against its issue price of Rs 125 per share and ended at Rs 157.60. Finally, while the Sensex surged past 23000 mark intraday, the Nifty ended at record high of over 6800 for the first time.

Finally, the BSE Sensex rushed by 650.19 points or 2.91%, to 22994.23, while the CNX Nifty surged by 198.95 points or 2.99% to 6,858.80.

The BSE Sensex touched a high and a low of 23048.49 and 22317.18, respectively. The BSE Mid cap index was up by 1.47%, while the Small cap index gained 0.72%.

The top gainers on the Sensex were ICICI Bank up by 6.63%, Tata Power up by 5.57%, Hindalco Inds up by 5.35%, HDFC Bank up by 5.31% and BHEL up by 5.21%. While, Dr Reddys Lab down by 0.84%, TCS down by 0.19% and Sun Pharma down by 0.13%, were the only losers in the index.

On the BSE Sectoral front, Bankex up by 5.34%, Realty up by 4.38%, Power up by 4.12%, PSU up by 3.57% and Oil & Gas up by 3.44% were the top gainers, while Healthcare down by 0.56% and Consumer Durables down by 0.03% were the only losers in the space.

Meanwhile, countering opposition’s attack on the Centre over the state of the economy, Finance Minister P Chidambaram highlighted that the economy has stabilized and was about to see a revival in the investment, leading to high growth.

On the capex plan, he underscored that domestic capital expenditure of about 23 public sector undertakings, including Navaratnas and Mini Ratnas, for the current fiscal would be at Rs 1.33 lakh crore as against Rs 1.25 lakh crore in the previous year and further praised the performance of the public sector undertakings (PSUs) for driving domestic investment.

Besides, Chidambaram expressed confidence that inflation of food items would be contained and said the Government brought about 1,200 lakh tonnes of wheat and rice to the public through various schemes and the public distribution system.  He highlighted that government had sold 69.01 lakh tonnes of wheat in the open market in the year 2012-13, while in the following year, the government sold 61.10 lakh tonnes of wheat. Similarly, the government had sold 0.99 lakh tonnes of rice during 2012-13, while in 2013-14, the government sold 1.48 lakh tonnes of rice in the open market.

The Finance Minister further stated that the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the last financial year, till February, was $26.90 billion. Additionally, he added that Rupee at 60 per dollar was true reflection of the value of currency.

The CNX Nifty touched a high and low of 6,871.35 and 6,652.15 respectively.

The top gainers of the Nifty were IDFC up by 8.25%, ICICI Bank up by 7.21%, Ambuja Cements up by 6.76%, Axis Bank up by 6.19% and Tata Power Company up by 5.70%. On the other hand, Lupin down by 1.48%, Dr. Reddy's Laboratories down by 0.99% and NMDC down by 0.03% were the losers.

The European markets were trading in red, France's CAC 40 was down by 0.68%, Germany's DAX was down by 0.38% and UK’s FTSE 100 down up by 0.37%.

The Asian markets concluded Friday’s trade mostly in green, while Shanghai Composite ended in red on concerns over weak Chinese inflation data. China’s annual inflation fell sharply to 1.8% in April, the lowest in 18 months raising concerns about the risk of deflation in the world’s second-largest economy. The country’s consumer price index - a main gauge of inflation - increased by 2.2% in the first four months of the year from the same period in 2013. Chinese PPI rose to an annual rate of -2.0%, from -2.3% in the preceding month. Japan’s index of leading economic indicators rose to a seasonally adjusted 106.5. Philippines Industrial Production fell to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of -1.1%, from 6.8% in the preceding month whose figure was revised up from 1.2%. The central bank has cut Indonesia’s gross domestic product estimate as it has kept its benchmark rate unchanged for the sixth consecutive month in an effort to narrow the country’s current account deficit. Bank Indonesia, blaming weak exports, cut full-year gross domestic product growth to between 5.1% and 5.5% from its previous estimate of between 5.5% and 5.9%.