IT, banks push Sensex closer to all-time highs; Cipla zooms by nearly 5 per cent, UltraTech Cement becomes top Sensex gainer

Sensex closed Thursday’s session up by 303.72 points or 0.76 per cent from Wednesday’s close to end the session at 40,182 levels while Nifty was up by 95.75 points or 0.82 per cent at 11,834 levels.

IT stocks dominated the day with IT bellwether stocks such as TCS, Wipro, and Infosys storming ahead and outperforming every other sectoral stock.

Meanwhile, HDFC Bank became the top Sensex contributor in today’s session.

The global markets were seen trading in green in the hope of a stimulus. The shares of travel companies were seen trading with gains on European bourses. FTSE was up by 0.30 per cent, CAC40 gained 0.38 per cent even as German DAX strengthened by 0.52 per cent.

In Asia, the trend was mixed with Hang Seng and Shanghai closing flat with no gains while Nikkei inching up by 0.96 per cent.

The top Sensex gainers included TCS that went up by 3.19 per cent, Infosys gained by  2.55 per cent, HCL Tech zoomed by 2.63 per cent, UltraTech Cement strengthened by 3.50 per cent while HDFC Bank rose by 2.58 per cent.

Top Sensex losers consisted of ONGC that went down by 2.84 per cent, ITC slipped 1.36 per cent, RIL fell by 0.81 per cent, L&T tumbled 0.75 per cent and PowerGrid declined by 0.88 per cent.

The small-caps underperformed with BSE Small-Cap index ending in red, down by 0.26 per cent whereas, BSE Mid-Cap index was up by 0.29 per cent.

Amongst sectoral indices, BSE IT Index was the best performing sectoral index, gaining by 2.99 per cent; BSE Telecom went up by 1.09 per cent, BSE Healthcare and Bankex gained by 1.50 per cent and 0.86 per cent, respectively.

BSE Oil & Gas declined by 0.69 per cent and BSE Metal & BSE Capital Goods index fell by 0.48 per cent and 0.51 per cent, respectively.