Sensex ends above 58k-mark for the first time, Nifty tops 17,300

Indian benchmark equity indices hit fresh record highs on Friday led by gains in index majors Reliance Industries, Infosys, Titan and Kotak Bank amid a positive trend in global markets. The BSE Sensex ended above the 58,000 mark for the first time, while Nifty settled above 17,300. In a volatile session, after hitting an intraday low of 57,764.07, the 30-share BSE index ended at 58,129.95, up 277.41 points or 0.48%. The broader NSE Nifty closed 89.45 points or 0.52% higher at 17,323.60. Reliance Industries, closing over 4% higher, was the top Sensex gainer followed by Titan, Tata Steel, Bajaj Auto, Maruti Suzuki and Dr Reddy's. HUL, Bharti Airtel, HDFC twins, IndusInd Bank and Axis Bank were among the laggards. “Large caps are playing a catch-up rally in the last one month, which is driving the benchmark to higher levels. We believe that the style rotation holds the key, moving forwards. We are in a very interesting phase of the market where benchmark indices are touching to all time high levels in which the market positioning has slowly shifted towards high quality large cap names," said Neeraj Chadawar, Head - Quantitative Equity Research, Axis Securities. "The market breadth has narrowed in the last one month and the high quality large cap stocks outperformed the broader market. Quality theme is clearly back in focus as we had highlighted this in the last month also where the market focus was slowly shifting towards the sustainability of the returns. We continue to see the broader market doing well, as the visibility on broad based earnings is still intact. Quality is an emerging theme which is now visible in the performance of FMCG index. Allocations are now increasingly shifting towards quality stocks where the earnings visibility and the balance sheet strength are very high,” Chadawar added Sectoral indices on the NSE closed mixed. Nifty Media, closing about 1.5% higher was the top sectoral gainer followed by Nifty Metal, Nifty Realty, Nifty Auto and Nifty PSU Bank. On the other hand, Nifty Bank, Nifty Private Bank, Nifty Financial Services and Nifty FMCG ended in the red.