Indian stock market ended the week on a high note, with the Nifty closing above the 18,000 mark, the highest in over two months. The Nifty gained 1% on Friday, closing with 150 points, largely supported by ITC, Reliance, L&T, and SBI. This surge in the Nifty is attributed to favorable domestic macros, strong retail investor participation, and FII buying of local shares.
Among the sectoral indices, except for the Nifty Consumer Durables, all indices ended the day in the green. The Nifty PSU Bank and Nifty Media maintained buoyancy with strong gains of over 2% each, while the Nifty IT ended the month in red with a loss of 1.3%. The Nifty PSU Bank continued its winning streak with a rise of 13% this month, and Nifty Realty was an outperformer in April, gaining 19%, owing to strong housing demand in Q4 of FY 2022-23.
Although the Nifty IT ended with gains of 1.2% on Friday, it was the only sectoral index that ended the month in the red. For the calendar year till date, the Nifty is still trading in the red. The biggest Nifty 50 losers of the day were Axis Bank, which witnessed profit booking after better-than-expected results in the last quarter of FY 2022-23. Out of the top 5 Nifty gainers, two were the Adani group companies, Adani Enterprises and Adani Ports, rising 3% each. It is noteworthy that all Adani group companies ended the day in green, with 6 out of 9 companies gaining more than 3% today.
Overall, the market was largely positive, with oil, gas, and FMCG shares trading in the green, while consumer durable shares traded with losses. Investors are eagerly awaiting more financial results from India Inc, with Ultratech Cement due to post its earnings later in the day. Axis Bank, Tech Mahindra, and Wipro reported their quarterly numbers on Thursday. Today marked the first trading day of the May F&O series, with the indices seeing the best F&O series in six months in April.