Despite flat start, market settles at record high

On Tuesday, Indian equity markets traded on a flat note for most part of the day but during the last hours, the market headed northward to settle at a record high.

BSE Sensex ended at 41,952.63, up by 94.94 points or 0.22 per cent after trading range-bound in the entire trading session. Further, NSE Nifty settled 32.75 points higher at 12,362.30.

Hero Motocorp, ITC, NTPC, M&M, TechM and Axis Bank were the leaders in today’s trading session which ended higher in the range of 1.4 to 2.2 per cent. Around 23 stocks of Sensex ended on a positive note. BSE FMCG ended with the highest gain amongst the sectoral index with 1.5 per cent gain.

Traders took support of the report which the government is expected to address, that is,  the issue of inverted duty structure, especially in sectors such as chemicals and electronics, in the forthcoming Budget, to boost manufacturing as part of the 'Make in India' campaign. However, further upside was restricted by the high retail inflation of 7.35 per cent which crossed RBI’s upper target of 6 per cent, resulting in ruling out of rate cut in the upcoming monetary policy meet.

Some optimism also came as the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) remained a net purchaser of the US dollar in November, buying $6.928 billion from the spot market on a net basis. The RBI had bought $7.458 billion of the greenback and sold $530 million in the spot market in the reporting month. The sentiments were also supported by broadly positive Asian indices coupled with expectations of healthy quarterly earnings results.