SENSEX, NIFTY50 rise for second straight session led by Infosys, Bharti Airtel

The Indian equity benchmarks rose for a second straight session on Monday, December 22, led by gains in index heavyweights like Infosys, Bharti Airtel, ICICI Bank, Reliance Industries, Tata Consultancy Services, Trent and Maruti Suzuki. The SENSEX rose as much as 672 points and NIFTY50 index touched an intraday high of 26,180 amid positive cues from other Asian markets.

The SENSEX climbed 638 points to close at 85,567 and NIFTY50 index advanced 206 points to settle at 26,172.

Asian shares surged on Monday tracking tech-driven gains on Wall Street, while the yen floundered near all-time lows against the euro and Swiss franc as higher interest rates piled pressure on Japanese government debt.

Despite it being a holiday-shortened week for much of the world, momentum funds were still flowing to equities, precious metals and commodities ahead of delayed data that is forecast to show the US economy had continued to grow strongly in the third quarter, news agency Reuters reported.

Sectoral landscape

Buying was visible across board as all the major sector gauges compiled by the National Stock Exchange, barring the measure of consumer durable shares, ended higher led by NIFTY IT index's 2% gain. NIFTY Metal, Auto, FMCG, IT, Pharma, Healthcare, Oil & Gas and Bank indices also rose between 0.4%-1.4%.

Broader markets closed in line with their larger peers as NIFTY Midcap 100 index rose 0.84% and NIFTY Smallcap 100 index climbed 1.17%.

Among the individual shares, shares of Hindustan Construction Company (HCC), a multinational engineering and construction company headquartered in Mumbai, rallied as much as 11.65% to ₹20.70 apiece on the NSE in the intraday session on Monday, December 22, after the company last week said it had secured a significant work project worth over ₹900 crore.

The company on Friday, in its regulatory filing, said that it has secured a significant infrastructure contract valued at approximately around ₹901 crore from the Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) for the construction of New Tunnel 28 on the Tupul-Imphal New Broad Gauge (BG) railway line.

Shares of the Multi-Commodity Exchange of India (MCX) soared as much as 5.07% to a fresh 52-week high of ₹10,830 apiece on the National Stock Exchange (NSE).

This comes after SEBI Chairman Tuhin Kanta Pandey, at the 11th convention of CPAI, said that the market regulator is working with the RBI and IRDAI to enable participation of banks and insurance companies in the commodity derivatives market. Furthermore, the shares were further bolstered as precious metals, gold and silver, touched fresh record highs.

NIFTY50 top gainers and losers

Trent was top gainer in the NIFTY50 index, the stock rose 3.86% to close at ₹4,219. Shriram Finance, Wipro, Infosys, Bharti Airtel, Tech Mahindra, Tata Motors PV, Bajaj Auto, Maruti Suzuki and Sun Pharma were also among the gainers.

On the flipside, HDFC Life, Tata Consumer Products, State Bank of India, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Cipla, Grasim and InterGlobe Aviation were among the notable laggards.

The overall market breadth was positive as 2,794 shares ended higher while 1,515 closed lower on the BSE.