Mr Vishal Wagh, Research Head
On Friday Indian equity benchmarks made optimistic start tracking rally in global peers. Markets are trading in fine-fettle in early deals ahead of the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) monetary policy outcome. Buying in PSU, Bankex and Consumer Durables stocks supported the domestic indices. In the afternoon session, Indian equity markets maintained their upward momentum following gains in public sector undertaking (PSU), banking and realty stocks. Both Sensex and Nifty are trading around 50,718 and 14,923 levels.
Most of the Asian equity benchmarks are trading higher on Friday, as the market sentiments got boosted with the fresh hopes about economic recovery followed by the better than expected US jobs data and mostly upbeat earnings news from big-name companies. Moreover, faster vaccine rollout and on optimism about larger stimulus package also added gains.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has kept the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 4.0 per cent. Consequently, the reverse repo rate under the LAF remains unchanged at 3.35 per cent and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate at 4.25 per cent.
In Nifty 50 top gainers are State Bank of India Ltd, Tata Steel Ltd, Divi's laboratories Ltd, Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd and UltraTech Cement Ltd. The loser was Bharti Airtel Ltd, Tata Motors Ltd, Axis Bank Ltd, ICICI Bank Ltd and UPL Ltd.