Equities rise for 3rd straight session, metal stocks surge

 The Indian stock market logged the third consecutive session of gains on Wednesday, with the BSE Sensex rising over 600 points.

The Nifty50 on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) also rose to end above the 9,500 mark.

Healthy buying was witnessed in S&P BSE Metal index and BSE Finance index which ended 3.92 per cent and 3.19 per cent higher, respectively.

Inflow of foreign funds also supported the Indian indices. Net inflow of foreign institutional investment on Wednesday stood at Rs 722.08 crore and that of domestic institutional investment was Rs 78.67 crore.

The BSE Sensex closed at 32,720.16, higher by 605.64 points or 1.89 per cent from the previous close of 32,114.52. It had opened at 32,311.04 and touched an intra-day high of 32,897.59 and a low of 32,171.65 points.

The Nifty50 closed at 9,553.35, higher by 172.45 points or 1.84 per cent from the previous close.

Rahul Sharma, Research Head at Equity99 Advisors, said: "In otherwise weak corporate earning sessions, traders continued with bargain hunting across the board today on positive clues in the global markets and stable crude oil prices."

Gaining for the third straight days, benchmark indices crossed key support levels thereby creating more faith amongst the traders that the liquidity-driven rally will continue, he said.

Deepak Jasani, Head of Retail Research at HDFC Securities, said that the broad market indices like the BSE Mid Cap and Small Cap indices gained less, thereby underperforming the Sensex and Nifty.

Among the Sensex stocks, the top gainers were HDFC (up 7.07 per cent), HDFC Bank (4.87 per cent) and HCL Technologies (4.11 per cent). On the hand the major losers were Axis Bank (down 3.67 per cent), Asian Paints (3.08 per cent) and Hindustan Unilever (2.55 per cent) IANS