It was charge of the bulls brigade on BSE

The gains were recorded despite RBI’s hiking its lending (repo) and borrowing (reverse repo) rates on Thursday to tame inflation, by curbing consumer spending.

The Bombay Stock Exchange 30-share barometer notched up 795.09 points, or 4.23 per cent, to settle at 32-month high of 19.594.75 on Friday, while the 50-issue Nifty of National Stock Exchange spurted by 244.90, or 4.34 per cent, to 5,884.95.

In a straight three-week of rally, the Sensex has surged by a whopping 1,606.34 points, or 8.92 per cent. Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs), key drivers of the current rally, picked up shares worth nearly Rs 9,382 crore this week, including provisional figure for Friday.

Heavy buying was seen in banking, realty and consumer durable stocks despite RBI’s hike in key interest rates, which were higher than market expectations. The Reserve Bank’s 25 basis points hike in repo rates and 50 basis point in reverse repo rate could not hamper the ongoing bullish trend.

The hike is widely believed to have signalled a pause in the current round of tightening of monetary policy that has been on over the past few months. The market ended with gains on four out of five trading sessions this week.

As inflation is topping out, analysts said the apex bank will take some pause in tightening monetary policy as monsoon has been above normal in most parts of the country. They said any market correction will be triggered by adverse global news rather than local developments, and will not be a big worry.

Of the 30-index-based stocks, only Bhel and Jindal Steel ended in the red. All sectoral indices finished the week with marked gains of between 1.35 per cent and 5.86 per cent.
The turnover on BSE and NSE was higher at Rs 25,968.75 crore and Rs 83,479.11 crore from last weekend’s turnover of Rs 22,406.38 crore and Rs 59,496.78 crore respectively.