Market to see more action post best weekly gain in 75 weeks

NEW DELHI: After sharp corrections followed by little recoveries for months, India’s equity market witnessed one of its best trading weeks in a very long time. Indian benchmark equity indices, Sensex and Nifty, on Friday rose for the sixth straight session and recorded their best weekly performance since February 2021 or 75 weeks.

While Sensex closed the week at 56072.2, up 2311 points or 4.30%, Nifty settled at 16719.45 with 670 points or 4.18%. The rally was mainly backed by foreign portfolio investments amid expectations of a less aggressive rate hike by the Fed in its coming meet.

Data from depositories highlights that between July 1 and July 22, FPIs (foreign portfolio investors) have become net investors this month so far, investing about Rs 1,100 crore in Indian shares. On Thursday alone, FPIs made investment of over $1 billion into Indian stocks. This is in sharp contrast to what they have been doing Since October last year. According to National Securities Depository Limited data, FPIs sold Rs 226,420 crore so far in 2022. In the month of June alone, FPIs net sell-off stood at Rs 50,145 crore from Indian stocks.

Santosh Meena, Head of Research, Swastika Investmart Ltd, said, “Indian equity benchmark indices Nifty and Sensex gained more than 4% last week with positive closing each day thanks to buying by FIIs, recovery in global market, some cool off in dollar index and commodity market, easing inflation fear, better than expected Q1 earnings so far.”

According to Meena, this week is going to be an event heavy therefore we can expect a spike in volatility. The market will first react to 30% of Nifty’s earnings on Monday morning because results of Reliance Industries Ltd, ICICI Bank, Kotak Bank, and Infosys over the weekend. Apart from this, many Nifty50 companies will announce their Q1 earnings during the weekdays.

Axis Bank, Tata Steel, Asian Paints, Bajaj Auto, Larsen & Toubro, Maruti Suzuki, Tata Motors and HDFC are some big names that would be announcing its Q1FY23 results this week.