Market Wrap, May 15: Indices see sharp recovery from day's lows; NIFTY hits 25K, SENSEX soars 1,200 points; all sectors rally

The Indian stock market staged a strong rally from the afternoon period on Thursday, May 15, after opening in red. Investors gained confidence after President Donald Trump said that the US and India are closer to signing a trade deal soon.

The sudden spike in the markets was also due to expiry day volatility. NIFTY50 has its weekly expiry, and the options data indicated a broad range of 24,500 to 25,000 for today’s expiry.

Foreign investors continued buying positions, also boosting the market sentiment. Exchange data for Wednesday showed that the foreign institutional investors (FII) bought ₹931.80 crore on a net basis.

The Indian equity market was the outperformer among its Asian peers as well on Thursday.

Globally, Asian markets opened lower with sharp losses in Japanese indices. The Nikkei 225 slipped 0.99% to 37,755.51, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng and South Korea's KOSPI fell 0.80% and 0.73%, respectively. The Shanghai Composite settled 0.68% lower at the 3,380.82 level.

The US markets closed mixed on Wednesday as trade tensions between the two largest economies eased.

The S&P 500 ended with marginal gains at 5,892.58 points, rising 6.03 points, or 0.10%. The Nasdaq Composite gained 136.72 points, or 0.72%, to 19,146.81, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average declined 89.37 points, or 0.21%, to 42,051.06.

As many as 22,942 stocks traded on the NSE on Thursday. Out of this, 1,980 advanced, and only 890 stocks declined, while 72 scrips remained unchanged.

This indicates that market breadth was majorly in favour of bulls.

A total of 59 stocks hit their 52-week highs, while 11 stocks touched their one-year lows. Besides, 175 stocks hit their upper circuit limits, and 27 touched their lower circuit bands on Thursday.

NSE-listed firms added ₹5.31 lakh crore in market capitalisation as it stood at ₹438.01 lakh crore at the end of the session.

The market capitalisation of BSE-listed firms also surged by ₹5 lakh crore from ₹434.89 lakh crore on May 14 to ₹439.94 lakh crore on Thursday.

The volatility index India VIX soared 10.21% to 21.01 levels.

The broader market also closed with gains as Nifty Midcap 100 rose 0.70% to the 56,530.85 level, while Nifty Smallcap 100 gained 0.54% to the 17,239.95 mark.

All the sectors ended with gains on Thursday, with Nifty Auto and Realty each surging 1.92%. Nifty Metal (1.74%), Nifty Media (1.59%), Nifty Oil and Gas (1.2%) and Nifty IT (1.16%) were the other top gainers among sectors.

Except for IndusInd Bank (-0.17%), all the other stocks on the NIFTY50 index closed in the green.

Hero MotoCorp (6.17%), JSW Steel (4.82%), Tata Motors (4.3%), Trent (3.8%) and Shriram Finance (3.38%) were the top contributors on the 50-share index.