Nifty spurts to all-time high, up 135 pts

The NSE benchmark Nifty today surged by 134.85 points to hit an all-time high, breaching the 11,700-level for the first time boosted by all-round buying mainly in banking and IT sectors amid positive global cues after US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell's statement of 'gradual approach' to raising rates.

Also, global markets reacted positively to the People's Bank of China announcement that it was tweaking its methodology for the fixing of the yuan's daily midpoint as part of efforts to stabilise the currency market.

The Nifty 50 index rose 134.85 points, or 1.17 per cent, to end at 11,691.95 -- a record closing high. It rose by 143.85 points to the day's high of 11,700.95 in mid-afternoon trade. The index rose 38.50 points to the day's low of 11,595.60 in early trade. It saw an intra-day movement of about 105.35 points.

On the sectoral front, PSU bank rose by 2.16 per cent, followed by private bank 1.66 per cent, IT 1.67 per cent, bank 1.54 per cent, metal 1.48 per cent, infra 1.42 per cent, energy 1.31 per cent, financial service 1.29 per cent, auto 0.83 per cent, FMCG 0.67 per cent, pharma 0.33 per cent, realty 0.07 per cent and media 0.02 per cent.

Major index gainers were Hindalco, Powergrid, ICICI Bank, BhartiAirtel, Infosys, Yes Bank, SBIN and TechM.

Losers were Sun Pharma, Bajaj Finserv and Dr Reddy.

The market breadth, indicating its overall health, turned gainers. On the NSE, 987 stocks advanced, 829 declined and 96 remained unchanged. Total securities that have hit their price bands were 254.

Turnover in the cash segment fell to Rs 29,974.67 crore from Rs 33,765.97 crore as on last Friday.

A total of 14,174.43 lakh shares changed hands in 1,06,96,090 trades. The market capitalisation of listed firms on NSE stood at Rs 1,56,56,310.38 crore.