Market covers up week’s losses on short covering
The stock market recovered all the losses it suffered on Monday in the last three days of short covering, with the Sensex regaining the 30,000 levels, helped by the government's measured actions to contain the spread of coronavirus and provide relief to affected companies and people.
New Coid-19 cases in India came down to 43 and total cases stood at
649. However, the global situation remained grim, with over 4.68 lakh affected by the virus and over
21,000 people dead. The Sensex gained another 1410 points, or
4.94 per cent, on Thursday to close at 29,946.77 while the Nifty-50 gains were much lower at 3.89 per cent, or 323.60 points, as it closed at 8,641.45 on the day of expiry of monthly futures and options contracts for March.
The Sensex briefly traded above 30,000 mark and touched a high of
30,099.91. The investor wealth rose for the third consecutive day, gaining over Rs 11.12 lakh crore in three days, as the market capitalisation of BSE-listed companies shot up Rs
11,12,088.78 crore to Rs
1,12,99,025.06 crore in the three days.
Banks led the market recovery for the second consecutive session, with the Nifty Bank Index up by 6.13 per cent. The top gainers included IndusInd Bank, which recorded biggest single day gain ever of 46.03 per cent, as it rallied from an extremely oversold position. The other gainers in the banking space included Bandhan Bank (42.16 per cent), Kotak Bank (6.42 per cent), HDFC Bank (4.81 per cent), ICICI Bank (4.61 per cent), Axis Bank (5.88 per cent).
FMCG stocks rallied after the Centre announced the Rs 1.70-lakh crore relief package for the
poor. The top FMCG gainers included Marico (7.98 per cent), ITC (6.41 per cent), Godrej Consumer
(6.35 per cent), Britannia
(6.06 per cent), Dabur (5.87 per cent), Colgate (4.47 per cent), HUL (4.35 per cent).
However, the present short covering may not last as the institutional investors are still in a profit booking mode. As per provisional data, selling by foreign portfolio investors has come down over the last few sessions, but FPIs were still net sellers by Rs 484.78 crore on Thursday and the domestic institutions too were net sellers by Rs
769.93 crore.