Bombay Stock Exchange building. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)
Sensex and Nifty opened higher today ahead of the GST council meet and following the upsurge in the Wall Street shares which again closed at record highs on Thursday. The benchmark Sensex The benchmark Sensex advanced as much as 190 points to hit the day’s high of 31,781.9 while the broader Nifty 50 jumped 68 points to mark the day’s high of 9,956.7 points. BSE Sensex gained 41 points to open at 31,633.34 points and NSE Nifty added 19 points to start at 9,908.15 points. Meanwhile, Japan’s Nikkei index jumped to two-year highs in the early on Friday.
The Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council may consider reducing the tax slab to 5% from the existing 12% on the labour component in government project works when it meets for the second time today. The GST Council, headed by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, will discuss various issues related to the GST via video conference call in the national capital.
Shares of NTPC, Tata Steel, M&M, SBI, ONGC, Asian Paints, and Infosys were the leaders on Sensex, gained up to 3.63% while HDFC, and Hero MotoCorp were the only two stocks trading in red. The stocks of heavyweight companies such as Reliance Industries, Infosys, ITC, NTPC, ICICI Bank, Tata Steel, L&T, SBI, and Kotak Mahindra Bank contributed the most to the index gains. Collectively these nine stocks alone added about 142 points out of the 186-points rise in Sensex. The 30-share barometer Sensex was trading 0.62% higher at 31,787.2 points.
US stocks notched record closing highs again on Thursday as investors cheered increased prospects for a tax overhaul with Congress moving closer to the agreement on a budget resolution. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 113.75 points, or 0.5 percent, to close at 22,775.39, the S&P 500 gained 14.33 points, or 0.56 percent, to 2,552.07 and the Nasdaq Composite added 50.73 points, or 0.78 percent, to 6,585.36. The rupee depreciated 13 paise to 65.27 against the dollar today.
Foreign Portfolio Investors (FPIs) continued their selling in the first three sessions of October after offloading equities worth $3.6 billion in the last two months. On Thursday foreign investors sold shares worth $100.78 million, provisional data on exchanges showed. FPIs sold Indian equities worth $1.6 billion in September, after offloading stocks worth nearly $2 billion in August.
