Nifty surpasses 18K mark after 44 days

The Nifty broke the psychological 18,000 mark on Friday for the first time in 44 days powered by strong buying by foreign portfolio investors. The benchmark index closed up 0.84% or almost 150 points to 18,065 while the Sensex climbed 0.76% or 463 points to close at 61,112.44.

FPIs net purchased shares worth a provisional ₹3,304 crore, while DIIs bought ₹264 crore worth of shares, driving up the benchmarks .

Reliance, SBI, ITC and Wipro contributed to the gains, rising between 2% and 3%. After selling shares worth ₹1.4 trillion in FY22 and ₹37,632 crore in FY23, FIIs bought shares worth ₹11,631 crore so far this month, showed NSDL data, which excluded Friday’s provisional figure. While FPIs were net sellers in the previous fiscal year, they purchased shares worth ₹7,936 crore in March.

The Nifty fell almost 11% from a record high of 18,887.6 on 1 December to 16,828 on 20 March. From the low, it has recovered 7.3% to Friday’s 18065.

Apart from contributions from the heavyweights , Adani Enterprises and Adani Ports gained, with the former rising 3.72% to ₹1,922 and the latter by 3.2% to ₹681 . Though being the top Nifty gainers, their weights aren’t as significant as some other index constituents to move the index materially.

Adani Enterprises saw physical buying with 162.3 million shares changing hands.

Rajesh Palviya, technical head, research at Axis Securities expects Nifty to test 18,200-18,300 in the near term on the positive momentum domestically and globally.

“Results of banks, autos and FMCG companies have been in line with higher interests rates not crimping the banks’ net interest margins , which is a good sign,” Palviya said. “This is aiding margins.”

Rohit Srivastava, founder, IndiaCharts, is bullish on markets and said the current leg of the rally was driven by FPIs buying in cash and diluting their large index futures short positions significantly and covering their index futures short positions substantially. These shorts pertain to Nifty and Bank Nifty futures .

The rollover of derivatives to the April series on Thursday also was lesser than the average rolls indicating that the market was light .