The benchmark equity indices, the BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty50, scaled historic highs before ending the week’s last trading session over 1 per cent higher each at record closing levels.
The BSE Sensex added as much as 1,359.51 points or 1.63 per cent to settle at 84,544.31. The index scaled a record high of 84,694.46 during intraday trade.
Mirroring the Sensex, Nifty50 touched an all-time high of 25,849.25 before ending Friday’s session with a gain of 375.15 points or 1.48 per cent at 25,790.95.
The day ended in favor of the bulls, as 44 out of 50 constituent stocks on Nifty50 ended higher with gains led by Mahindra & Mahindra, ICICI Bank, JSW Steel, Larsen & Toubro, and Coca-Cola, of up to 5.3per cent each. Conversely, Grasim Industries, SBI, and NTPC were among the six stocks that ended in the red on Friday.
Global Cues
Meanwhile, markets in the Asia-Pacific region opened higher on Friday, following the surge on Wall Street.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 was leading gains, up 1.76 per cent, while Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 climbed 0.2 per cent. The broad-based Topix was ahead by 1.63 per cent.
South Korea’s blue chip Kospi had advanced 1.45 per cent and the small-cap Kosdaq was up 1.51 per cent.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index futures were at 18,177, higher than HSI’s last close of 18,013, while futures tied to mainland China’s blue chip CSI 300 stood at 3,198.8, compared with the index’s last close of 3,196.
Overnight, major Wall Street indices broke record highs after global counterparts booked gains and Treasury yields rose on Thursday as the start of the Federal Reserve’s first rate-cutting cycle in more than four years whet investors’ risk appetite.
With a larger-than-usual move on Wednesday, the US central bank turned the page on more than a year in which borrowing costs were kept at their highest for decades to try to temper inflation.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell said he did not see elevated risks of a slowdown, and policymakers projected the benchmark rate would fall again, reflected in a closely-watched tool known as a dot plot.
Megacap tech stocks gained, with Tesla and Meta posting solid gains. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite climbed 2.51 per cent to 18,013.98 points.
The blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial average rose 1.26 per cent to 42,025.19 points, while the benchmark S&P 500 advanced 1.70 per cent to end the session at 5,713.64 points. Both were record-high closing levels.
