The Nifty fluctuated 377.25 points between the day’s low and high on Thursday before surging to a record high of 22,252.50 for the fourth session in a row. After artificial intelligence (AI) leader Nvidia surged 14% in pre-market trading on the US Nasdaq, domestic institutions’ purchases of technology, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies, and Reliance propelled the rebound in the final hour and a half of trading.
A provisional amount of ₹1,828.63 crore was acquired by domestic institutional investors (DIIs) through net purchases, while ₹1,410.05 crore was sold by FIIs through net sales.
The Nifty started the day up 26 points at 9:15 am, but the gains were swiftly erased as selling took hold of the market, sending it down 4.5 percent to an intraday low of 21,875.25 points by 11 am.
“Thursday’s highly volatile trade is because of the Nifty weekly options expiry,” stated Rajesh Palviya, senior VP at Axis Securities. “The bulls trapped the call writers who sold an incremental 30.89 lakh shares a day before buying index stocks heavily after 2 pm on Thursday in response to the blowout rally in Nvidia, which caused the index to reverse its losses and hit a record high.”
The Sensex ended the day up 0.74% at 73,158.24, having recovered all of its losses to close in the green. However, it was unable to top its record high of 73,427.59 on January 16.
Cigarette manufacturer ITC (22.48 points), TCS (22.15 points), Reliance Industries (21.74 points), and Infy (21.06 points) were the main drivers of the Nifty’s 162.4 point surge.
“Our base case is the Nifty consolidating in a 21,300-22,000 range, which it has traded between for the past two months, with chances of a breakout higher than those of a breakdown,” added Gaurav Dua, head, capital market strategy at Sharekhan by BNP Paribas. “This consolidation has been good, absorbing the rally in the second-half of last year, the impact of the Interim Budget, the RBI policy and the Q3 results which didn’t have any negative surprises. During this period the excessive froth in the micro-cap and small-cap spaces has also been removed.”
