Benchmarks turn rangebound; European shares advance

The key equity barometers continued to trade in a narrow range with substantial gains in afternoon trade. The Nifty hovered above the 21,650 mark. Barring the Nifty IT index, all the other sectoral indices on the NSE traded in green.

At 13:30 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, was up 500.91 points or 0.70% to 71,857.51. The Nifty 50 index added 141.55 points or 0.66% to 21,658.90.

In the broader market, the S&P BSE Mid-Cap index added 1.25% and the S&P BSE Small-Cap index rose 0.98%.

The market breadth was strong. On the BSE 2,615 shares rose and 1,156 shares fell. A total of 120 shares were unchanged.

Gainers & Losers:

NTPC (up 4.05%), Bajaj Finance (up 3.74%), Tata Consumer Products (up 3.45%), Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (up 3.19%) and IndusInd Bank (up 2.85%) were major Nifty gainers.

Bharat Petroleum Corporation (down 1.68%), Ltimindtree (down 1.66%), HCL Technologies (down 1.18%), Hero MotoCorp (down 1.13%) and Dr. Reddy`s laboratories (down 1.11%) were major Nifty losers.

Bajaj Finance gained 3.74% after the NBFC�s new loans booked during Q2 FY24 grew by 26% to 8.53 million as compared to 6.76 million in Q2 FY23.

IndusInd Bank`s stock advanced 2.85% after the bank reported a robust 20% year-over-year (YoY) growth in net advances to Rs 3.26 lakh crore for the quarter ended 31 December 2023.

Stocks in Spotlight:

Indian Energy Exchange (IEX) rose 1.50% after the company informed that it has achieved 9,707 million units (MU) overall volume in December 2023, registering an increase of 14.9% increase on YoY basis.

Ujjivan Small Finance Bank (SFB) jumped 4.52% after the bank�s total deposits surged 29% YoY to Rs 29,869 crore as of 31 December 2023.

Angel One surged 3.49% after the brokerage company�s client base jumped 55.5% to 19.45 million in December 2023 as against 12.51 million in December 2022.

Global Markets:

Markets in Europe advanced while its Asian peers declined on Thursday, led by Japan as the country resumed trading after an extended New Year�s holiday during which it witnessed an earthquake and a collision at Tokyo�s Haneda airport involving Japan Airlines.

The Caixin China General Services Business Activity Index rose to 52.9 in December compared with 51.5 in November, climbing for a 12th straight month. The survey also noted that the rate of growth was the fastest since July.

US stocks lost ground on Friday after the Fed minutes revealed officials concluded that interest rate cuts were likely in 2024, though they appeared to provide little in the way of when that might occur.

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