Sensex smashes past 35,000-mark; banks, IT lead charge

The BSE Sensex soared 310 points on Wednesday to close above the 35,000-level for the first time ever after the government lowered additional borrowing requirement for this fiscal, calming widening fiscal deficit fears.

The wider Nifty too finished at its fresh life-time high on unabated buying. Banking stocks ratcheted up after the Centre today lowered the additional borrowing requirement for the current fiscal to Rs 20,000 crore from Rs 50,000 crore estimated earlier.

The 30-share Sensex surged 310.77 points, or 0.89%, to end at 35,081.82, breaking its previous record of 34,843.51 reached on January 15.

It took the benchmark just 17 sessions to scale the 35,000-mark from the 34,000-level reached on December 26.

The broader Nifty jumped 88.10 points, or 0.82%, to close at 10,788.55, surpassing its previous record of 10,741.55 hit on January 15. It also touched an intra-day record of 10,803.

"The Sensex scaled another milestone with strong buying in banking stocks as the government cut the additional borrowing target...easing some pressure on bond yields and fiscal deficit," said Rakesh Tarway, Head of Research, Reliance Securities.

"The IT sector continues to trade at 52-week highs with upgrades post Q3 FY18 results and positive comments from the management with improvement in IT spending and budgets owing to new initiatives like artificial intelligence and automation," said Tarway.

Strong gains in the rupee after forex inflows also improved the market sentiment. Meanwhile, foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) bought shares worth a net Rs 693.17 crore while domestic institutional investors (DIIs) had sold equities worth a net Rs 246.38 crore on Tuesday, as per provisional data.

Reflecting the market's bullish mood, all the sectoral indices led by capital goods and bank, ended in the green today, with gains in the range of 0.11% to 1.59%.

Among Sensex components, Axis Bank topped the gainers' list by surging 4.65%, followed by SBI 3.44%.

Other gainers were ICICI Bank, Yes Bank, Adani Ports, L&T, ITC, Dr Reddy's, Tata Steel, Sun Pharma, Power Grid, Bajaj Auto, Bharti Airtel, HDFC Ltd, Reliance Industries and NTPC, climbing up to 2.68%.

Shares of IT companies such as Infosys and TCS continued to attract buyers and rose up to 2.61%.

Broader markets too finished with gains. The mid-cap index rose 0.66% while the small-cap spurted 0.43%.

In the Asian region, Shanghai Composite Index rose 0.24%, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng gained 0.25%. Japan's Nikkei shed 0.35%.

In the Eurozone, Paris CAC 40 fell 0.19% and Frankfurt's DAX fell 0.15%. London's FTSE was down 0.27% in early deals.