Sensex scales 62k on volatile day, gains 12k points in 9 months

MUMBAI: An initial rally on Dalal Street on Tuesday took the sensex past the 62k mark for the first time. But profit-taking by a large number of investors on the back of the recent surge in share prices led to a strong sell-off in stocks outside of the leading indices. As a result, after hitting a life high at 62,245 points in mid-session, the market witnessed strong selling in late trades and closed at 61,716 — down 50 points on the day.
The sensex took just two days to go past the 62k mark from 61k, one of the fastest ever for covering a 1,000-point gap.It also took nine months to rally from the historic 50k mark on January 21 this year to 62k on Tuesday.
According to Motilal Oswal Financial Services head (retail research) Siddhartha Khemka, the domestic market opened above 62k and continued its positive rally backed by its global peers, but witnessed huge volatility to finally close the session in the red. “The festive mood along with further relaxation (from Covid-related restrictions) in Maharashtra continues to cheer investors and is thus driving the positive momentum. Accelerated demand and good quarterly corporate results have kept investors’ interest sanguine,” Khemka wrote in a post-market note. “However, rising global commodity and energy prices continue to be a cause of worry. With lot of heavyweights reporting their numbers this week, it would keep the markets volatile.”

The day’s slide outside of the sensex was apparent from the sell-off in several sectors that had outperformed the index. By the end of the session, BSE’s realty index closed 4.6% lower while FMCG lost 3.1% and the consumer durables index 2.9%. Among the handful of sectoral gainers were IT (up 1.3%) and capital goods (gained 0.6%). The day’s sell-off also left investors poorer by Rs 3.3 lakh crore with BSE’s market capitalisation now at Rs 274 lakh crore.
Data at the end of the day on the BSE also showed that both foreign and domestic funds were net sellers at Rs 506 crore and Rs 2,578 crore, respectively. Of late, foreign fund managers have been taking money off Indian stock markets with October’s net inflow figure now at about Rs 1,200 crore, compared to a net inflow of Rs 13,154 crore in September. Among the 30 sensex stocks, 16 closed in the red, while 14 closed higher. However, in the broader market, the advance-decline ratio was highly skewed in favour of declines at 935-to-2,427, BSE data showed.