Bulls continued to dominate domestic markets post Christmas on Wednesday as benchmark BSE Sensex clocked all-time highs of 72,110 levels towards the end of the trading session while the NSE Nifty 50 scaled to fresh lifetime highs of 21,673 levels.
Experts believe the trend was predominantly supported by the Santa Claus rally in anticipation of early rate cuts by the US Fed and cooling global inflation.
At close, the BSE Sensex shut shop 0.9 per cent higher at 72,038 levels, while NSE Nifty 50 ended 1 per cent higher at 21,654 levels.
Indian rupee ended marginally lower at 83.19 per dollar against Friday’s close of 83.15.
Bank Nifty crossed the 48,240 barrier at intra-day deals helped by gains in HDFC Bank, SBI, Bank of Baroda, PNB, and IndusInd Bank.
Nifty Midcap 100 and Nifty Smallcap 100 gained up to 0.6 per cent. However, analysts continue to remain cautious over its excessive valuations and expect some correction on the horizon.
The biggest Nifty gainers were Divis Laboratories, Hero MotoCorp, Adani Enterprises, Hindalco and NTPC, while losers were Bajaj Finance, Bajaj Finserv, Infosys, TCS and Tata Motors.
Except for Information Technology, all other sectoral indices ended in the green with oil & gas, power, metal, auto, healthcare gaining 1 per cent each.
BSE midcap index added 0.7 per cent and smallcap index up 0.5 per cent.
In a separate development, as per the numbers collated by Venture Intelligence, and industry body IVCA, investments by private equity and venture capital funds as of December 20, 2023, fell to a low of USD 27.9 billion across 697 transactions, as against USD 47.62 billion inflows in 2022 across 1,364 deals.
Investments from private equity and venture capital funds into domestic companies declined about 40 per cent to USD 27.9 billion so far this year, while the outflow increased marginally to USD 19.34 billion year-on-year.