SENSEX, NIFTY50 move higher as crude falls, rupee gains against US dollar

The Indian equity benchmarks staged a gap up opening on Thursday, May 21, as crude oil prices dropped in international markets following comments from US President Donald Trump that US is in the "final stages" with Iran, signalling that energy flows through the Strait of Hormuz will resume soon.

The SENSEX rose as much as 627 points and NIFTY50 index touched an intraday high of 23,859 led by gains in index heavyweights like HDFC Bank, Bharat Electronics, Larsen & Toubro, ICICI Bank, InterGlobe Aviation and Eternal.

As of 9:24 am, the markets gave up some initial gains but were trading higher. The SENSEX was up 317 points at 75,636 and NIFTY50 index advanced 116 points to 23,775.

Asian markets were trading higher after Brent crude fell over 5% after President Trump stated that the US was in the final stages of talks with Iran and the war could end soon. Following the development, Brent crude oil prices plunged to $103 per barrel, the lowest in two weeks.

Japan's Nikkei advanced 3.6%, China's Shanghai Composite rose 0.77% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng climbed 0.2%.

South Korea's KOSPI surged 7.2% helped by strong buying of technology shares such as Samsung Electronics, which gained 6.3%. Shares in SK Hynix, a computer chipmaker partnering with Nvidia, surged 9.5%.

Back home, rupee bounced back from its record low touched in the previous session. The local unit rose 44 paise to 96.38 against the dollar giving a sigh of relief to market participants.

Buying was visible across board as all the major sector gauges compiled by the National Stock Exchange (NSE), barring the measure of IT shares, were trading higher led by the NIFTY Realty index's 1.23% gain. NIFTY Metal, Bank, Financial Services, Media, Pharma, PSU Bank, Private Bank and Healthcare indices also rose between 0.3% and 0.8%.

Broader markets were also witnessing buying interest as NIFTY Midcap 100 index advanced 0.6% and NIFTY Smallcap 100 index gained 0.8%.

Among the individual shares, operator of Domino's in India Jubilant FoodWorks plunged as much as 8% to hit an intraday low of ₹434.65 after its like for like growth in FY26 came in at 6.5% compared with 7.5% in the previous financial year.

Grasim Industries was top gainer in the NIFTY50 index, the stock rose 3.43% to ₹3,073 after its revenue reached an all-time high of ₹1,75,431 Cr., up 18% YoY, led by all-round performance across all business segments in FY26.

Apollo Hospitals, Bharat Electronics, Max Healthcare, InterGlobe Aviation, Adani Enterprises, Asian Paints and Hindalco also rose between 1.23% and 3.37%.

On the flip side, Tata Consumer Products, ONGC, Nestle India, Bajaj Finance, TCS, Infosys and Titan were top losers in the NIFTY50 index.

The overall market breadth was positive as 2,282 shares were advancing while 537 were declining on the NSE.