Sensex 1800 points away from peak

Welcome to ETMarkets Watch, your daily wrap-up to the day on Dalal Street. I am Nikhil Agarwal.

Last Friday's stress turned out to be short-lived for Dalal Street bulls as Sensex ended 710 points higher to inch closer to the 62,000-mark while Nifty zoomed past the 18,250 level. Banks, financials and auto stocks led the rally as the total market capitalisation of all BSE-listed stocks jumped Rs 2.32 lakh crore to Rs 276.10 lakh crore.

Sensex is now just around 1,800 points away from its all-time peak of 63,583 touched on 1 December last year.

The rally comes despite some foreign brokerages taking neutral-to-bearish stance on Indian equities. BofA Securities had last week made a case for booking profits when Nifty is at 18,000 and buying into the dips if it moves towards 16000 level.

Banks and other financial stocks were among the biggest contributors to today's rally. Merger-bound HDFC twins that had ended 5% lower on Friday ahead of MSCI tweak recovered over 1% each. IndusInd Bank was the top gainer in Nifty Bank while Bajaj twins - Bajaj Finance and Bajaj Finserv - ended 3-4% higher.

Today's rally was led by FII buying of Indian stocks worth over Rs 2,100 crore.

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