Market / Sensex crosses 48,000-mark for first time, Nifty above 14,100

Mumbai: The BSE Sensex opened higher on Monday tracking positive Asian shares while record GST collection in the month of December 2020 also boosted sentiment. The gross GST revenue collected in the month of December 2020 stood at Rs 1,15,174 crore, showing signs of recovery in the economy. As of 9:18 am, the Sensex was up 235 points or 0.49% to trade above the 48,000 mark for the the first time while the 50-share Nifty index rose 64.60 points to 14,084.20. Nifty crosses the 14,100 mark in the opening trade.

IT, metal and banking stocks led gains in the market today. All the sector indices were in the positive territory. Among Nifty stocks, Tata Motors was the top gainer, up 3.52% followed by Gail and Eicher Motors, which rallied 2.48% and 2.10% respectively. BPCL, ONGC, Tata Steel, Grasim, Hindalco, JSW Steel, IOC, SBI, IndusInd Bank, TCS, Infosys, Coal India, HUL, HCL Tech, UPL, Bharti Airtel, ICICI Bank, Divis Labs, L&T were the other prominent gainers in the Nifty.

Reliance Industries, Hero MotoCorp and Asian Paints were the only three losers in the Nifty falling between 0.19%-0.49%.

On Friday, the Sensex ended 117.65 points or 0.25% higher at 47,868.98, while Nifty settled at an all-time high level of 14,018.50, up 36.75 points or 0.26%. Foreign portfolio investors bought Indian equities worth Rs 506 crore in the cash segment on a provisional basis and bought Rs 1,455 crore in the futures & options market. They decreased their net long in index futures to 75% as compared to 76% on the previous day. That’s below the December average of 72%. Domestic institutions bought Indian equities worth Rs 69 crore in the cash market.  

Global Markets

Asian shares were mostly in the green except for the Nikkei, which fell 0.53%. Shanghai Composite was up 0.91%, Taiwan Weighted advanced 1.11%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng index added 0.84% while South Korea's Kospi index rose 2.29%. On Friday,  US stocks stocks closed higher. The Dow Jones index closed 0.65% higher, S&P 500 closed with 0.64% gains while the Nasdaq settled 0.14% higher.