Where is Nifty headed after Budget risk out of the way?

Welcome to ETMarkets Watch, the show about stocks, market trends and money-making ideas. I am Bhaskar Dutta and here are the top headlines at this hour.

- Govt expects low dividend from RBI in FY23
- Railway Ministry allocated over Rs 1,40,000 cr
- Budget keeps cigarette taxes untouched for 2nd year
- Govt to infuse Rs 44,720 crore into BSNL in FY23
- 58 paise from every rupee in govt coffer to come from taxes
- FY23 divestment receipts pegged at Rs 65,000 cr

Let us take a quick glance at what happened on Dalal Street today.

Domestic equity markets gave a thumbs up to Nirmala Sitharaman's budget announcements as the benchmark indices ended the volatile session with strong gains. Market participants believe that the budget measures could rescue the ailing pandemic-hit economy with its Capex thrust.

In the last two sessions, investors' wealth has grown by Rs 6.37 lakh crore.

The BSE barometer gyrated in the wild range of 1,300 points. It ended the session above 58,860 with a rise of 850 points. The index briefly kissed the 59,000 mark during the day. Its broader peer, Nifty50, surged about 240 points and ended close to the 17,600 mark. The index did scale level during the session but gave up some gains. Broader markets continued to underperform the headline peers as BSE midcap and smallcap indices added a per cent each. Fear gauge India VIX eased around 9 per cent and settled just below 20-levels.

Among Sensex stocks, Tata Steel topped the gainers with an 8 per cent rise, followed by a 7 per cent rally in Sun Pharma and a 6 per cent jump in IndusInd Bank. L&T and Ultratech Cement surged 4 per cent each. ITC, Titan, HCL Tech and ICICI Bank zoomed 3 per cent each. Infosys, Tech Mahindra, HDFC, TCS and Kotak Mahindra Bank gained 2 per cent each.

Among the losers, M&M dropped 2 per cent, followed by Power Grid, SBI and Airtel which shed a per cent each. NTPC, Maruti and Reliance also settled with cuts. More than 300 stocks hit upper circuit limits for the day and about 320 stocks hit the lower circuits. Almost 50 stocks tested their 52-week highs during the session.

We have Prem Parekh from CapitalVia Global Research to share his views on the action and the road ahead. Welcome to the show sir.
1. Equity markets cheered budget announcements. How do you see them?
2. What are the key themes emerging for the investors to play after the union budget?

We also caught up with Rupak De of LKP Securities to decode the technical charts for you.
1. Nifty 50 scaled 17,600 during the session. What is next on the cards?
2. What is your take on Nifty Bank after today's gains?

Asian markets, those open, settled higher for the day. Major European markets were trading with decent gains in the first few hours of trade. However, US stock futures were down hinting towards a negative start to US equities later in the day.

That’s all for now. Do check out ETMarkets.com for all the news, market analysis, investment strategies and dozens of stock recommendations. Enjoy your evening. Bye Bye!