Stock markets close at record high: Sensex surges 553 points, Nifty ends above 12,000 for first time
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Benchmark indices Sensex and Nifty hit their respective fresh all-time highs in the afternoon session on Monday.
The key Indian equity indices created new benchmarks on Monday with the Sensex hitting a record high level of 40,283.54 points.
The Nifty50 on the National Stock Exchange touched its fresh all-time high of 12,081.85 points.
Both the broader NSE Nifty and the benchmark BSE Sensex gained 1.39% each, settling above the 12,000 and 40,000 levels, respectively, for the first time ever.
Hero MotoCorp Ltd advanced about 6% and was the top gainer on both the indexes. The Nifty Auto index rose over 2%.
Top Sensex gainers include Hero MotoCorp, Bajaj Auto, Asian Paints, IndusInd Bank, HUL, Maruti, Coal India, HDFC twins, RIL and TCS, rallying up to 5 per cent.
While, ITC, L&T and NTPC slipped up to 0.29 per cent.
According to traders, investors are lapping up stocks amid expectations of an interest rate cut by Reserve Bank of India (RBI) this week.
The RBI may go for another round of rate cut, third in a row, on Thursday to prop up the economic growth which dropped to a five-year low in the final quarter of 2018-19, experts said.
The RBI's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is slated to announce its bi-monthly policy Thursday. The central bank had cut the short-term lending rate (repo rate) by 25 basis points each in its last two policy reviews.
The MPC headed by RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das will meet for three days beginning June 3 to firm up the second bi-monthly monetary policy of the fiscal.
Meanwhile, foreign institutional investors bought equity worth Rs 676.15 crore on Friday, and domestic institutional investors purchased shares to the tune of Rs 394.09 crore, provisional data available with stock exchanges showed.
Elsewhere in Asia, bourses in China, Japan and Korea were trading on a mixed note in their respective early sessions.
On the currency front, the rupee also appreciated 43 paise to 69.26 against the US dollar.
Brent crude futures, the global oil benchmark, were trading 0.31 per cent lower at 61.83 per barrel.
(With inputs from agencies)