Dalal Street celebrates Christmas: Sensex crosses 34,000 for first time ever, Nifty hits fresh all-time high

Sensex crossed 34,000-level in the opening session on Tuesday after a three day Christmas weekend. Indian stock markets started on a higher note with the key equity indices Sensex and Nifty surpassing their previous records. S&P BSE Sensex jumped 65.07 points to hit a lifetime high of 34,005.37 whereas NSE Nifty too edged up, rising by 22.1 points to mark another all-time high of 10,515.1. Shares of heavyweight companies such as Tata Consultancy Services, HDFC, ITC, ONGC, Asian Paints and Reliance Industries contributed to the upsurge of Sensex. The benchmark Sensex started at 33,980.76, up by 40.46 points and 50-share indicator Nifty opened 19.3 points higher at 10,512.3.

Shares of ONGC (up 1.71%), Dr Reddy’s (up 0.98%), Tata Steel (up 0.66%), Asian Paints (up 0.7%), TCS (0.69%) and Sun Pharma (up 0.7%) were the top gainers on Sensex while ICICI Bank (down 0.77%), Coal India (down 0.62%), Infosys (down 0.78%), Hero MotoCorp (down 0.59%), M&M (down 0.5%) and SBI (down 0.53%) were the top losers. The sectoral indices of National Stock Exchange were trading mixed with Nifty Realty leading the charge and Nifty PSU Bank index losing the most. Among the Nifty stocks, Bosch, ONGC, GAIL, Vedanta, Indian Oil Corporation gained up to 2.4%.

The stocks of blue-chip companies such as Reliance Industries, ITC, ONGC, and TCS alone added about 40 points while a downtick in shares of ICICI Bank, and Infosys washed off nearly 31 points. From the Nifty Next 50 index, shares of Cummins India, SAIL, NHPC, DLF, NMDC and Indigo rose up to 3.2% while PNB, Colgate Palmolive shed up to 1.3%. Sensex made a day’s low of 33,925.2 and Nifty marked a day’s low of 10,486.1.

Earlier last week on Friday, NSE Nifty hit the 10,500-mark for the first time ever led by the upmove in the shares of Infosys, TCS, State Bank of India, Reliance Industries, HDFC Bank, HDFC, ONGC, Bajaj Finance, L&T and ICICI Bank. The major gainers among ‘A’ group of Bombay Stock Exchange were Welspun Corp, Dilip Buildcon, Fortis Healthcare, Jet Airways, RCom while major losers were Unitech, Adani Transmission, Syndicate Bank, Allahabad Bank, and Videocon. Among the broad market indices of National Stock Exchange, Nifty Next 50, Nifty 100, Nifty 200, Nifty 500 gained in the range of 0.05-0.3% while Nifty Midcap 50 traded in the red. India Vix index added 4.42%.