Relief rally in markets, Sensex up 1,861 points (2nd Lead)

Mumbai, March 25 (IANS) Amid a rebound in the global markets, Indian equity indices surged on Wednesday with the BSE Sensex gaining over 1,800 points to close above the 28,000-mark.

The Nifty50 on the National Stock Exchange also soared 516 points to settle above the psychological 8,000 level.

Although trade in the domestic stock market was largely volatile in the first two hours, the indices started to rise steadily around noon.

The surge in Indian equities was in line with the global indices. Asian markets rose after the White House and Senate leaders in the US struck a major deal on Wednesday over a $2-trillion package relief to support the world’s largest economy amidst the coronavirus pandemic.

Further, the assurance of an economic package by the Central government to mitigate the impact of the coronavirus crisis also supported the domestic markets, analysts said.

On Tuesday, announcing relaxations in several regulatory compliance norms for tax payers, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman also said: “The economic package is going to be announced soon.”

The Sensex closed at 28,535.78, higher by 1,861.75 or 6.98 per cent from the previous close of 26,674.03.

It had opened at 26,499.81 and touched an intra-day high of 28,790.19 and a low of 26,359.91 points.

The Nifty50 settled at 8,317.85, higher by 516.80 points or 6.62 per cent from its previous close.

Healthy buying was witnessed across sectors on Wednesday, led by finance, banking and energy stocks. The S&P BSE Finance and Banking indices rose over 8 per cent while the S&P BSE Energy was up 10 per cent.

Among the Sensex stocks, Reliance Industries rose the most, by 14.65 per cent, followed by Kotak Mahindra Bank (up 12.65 per cent), Maruti Suzuki India (12.23 per cent), HDFC Bank (11.77 per cent) and HDFC (9.44 per cent).

On the contrary, IndusInd Bank, ONGC, ITC and Bajaj Auto were the only losers on the 30-stock Sensex, as they were down 3.57 per cent, 1.60 per cent, 1.41 per cent and 0.55 per cent respectively.

–IANS

rrb/vd