Corporate tax cut move drives on stock market; Sensex gains 1,126 pts, Nifty at 11,600

Following the central government's recent move to slash corporate tax rates, domestic equity indices continued to rise on Monday, signalling a healthy gain in the market and cheering investor sentiments. At 11:20 AM, the BSE SENSEX index surged 1,126.85 points in early trade to stand at 39,141.47, while the NSE NIFTY 50 crossed the 11,600 mark, indicating a 339.35 point increase.

According to reports, this shows that the rally on bourses have continued till today with heavy buying by foreign institutional investors (FIIs) as well as domestic traders after the government on Friday announced big-bang fiscal stimulus on corporate tax cuts.

Equity indices also gained due to rationalisation of Goods and Services Tax for certain sectors. The current indices are an update from an earlier figure taken at 10:15 AM when the BSE S&P Sensex was up by 783 points at 38,798 or 2% while the Nifty 50 was 232 points higher at 11,507.

At the National Stock Exchange, all sectoral indices except for IT and pharma were in the positive territory with Nifty FMCG gaining by 4.8%, private bank by 3.7%, financial service by 2.9% and auto by 2.5%.

Among stocks, the prominent winner was ITC which moved up by 7% to Rs 254.90 per share. GAIL, IndusInd Bank, Eicher Motors, Larsen & Toubro, Britannia and Asian Paints added gains of over 6% while Titan, Adani Ports and Hindustan Lever were up by more than 5% each.

However, IT scrips lost with Infosys down by 3.4%, Wipro by 2%, Tata Consultancy Services by 1.9%, HCL Technologies and Tech Mahindra by 1.8% each.

Meanwhile, most Asian share markets slipped as investors waited for more clarity on the US-China trade talks after recent negotiations. Oil prices rose by 1% as Middle East tensions remained elevated.

China's blue-chip index was down by 1.5% while Hong Kong's Hang Seng index was 0.8% weaker after a weekend of violent protests by pro-democracy activists.

South Korea's Kospi was a notch lower which left MSCI's broadest index of Asia Pacific shares outside Japan down by 0.3%.

Bombay Stock Exchange - BSE

National Stock Exchange of India Ltd (NSE)