Nifty ends at 17-month high on +ve global cues; metals zoom

The market maintained its uptrend for the second consecutive day and closed at 17-month high. The Nifty closed above the 5,100 mark and the Sensex ended above the 17,200 level, for the first time since May 21, 2008. Today's rally was mainly led by metal, auto, infrastructure, realty and banking stocks. However, huge selling was seen in telecom, oil marketing and airline companies' shares.

Global cues remained supportive throughout the session. European markets went up nearly 2% and the US index futures gained over 1% each, at the time of writing this report. Asian markets also ended higher; Hang Seng rose nearly 2%. Shanghai, Straits Times, Kospi, Taiwan Weighted and Jakarta Composite moved up 1.2-1.6%. Nikkei was flat.

Appreciation in the Indian rupee was also supporting the markets. It was trading at new 13-month high of 46.10 per dollar on continuing global dollar weakness and good flows into India.

The 30-share BSE Sensex closed 1.2% or 204.44 points higher at 17,231.11 and the 50-share NSE Nifty rose 1.27% or 63.95 points, to settle at 5118.20. These indices gained 588 points and 173 points in two days, respectively. The Nifty October future ended marginally in the premium. The Nifty 5,100 Put added 14 lakh shares in Open Interest.

The broader indices outperformed the benchmark indices; the BSE Midcap Index was up 2% and the Smallcap Index was up 1.5%.

Vijay Bhambwani of bsplindia.com said it was appearing like a fresh breakout. "Even at this point in time I do feel that the Nifty has about 100-150 points headroom on the upside, which means that you can actually see 5200 or maybe 5250-5275 odd levels before some amount of serious profit taking coming in. At this point in time I think long should remain longs and probably keep raising the trailing stop losses."