Indian stocks start fresh week in green; Sensex, Nifty up over 1%

NEW DELHI: Indian stock market indices opened the new week's trade on a high, supported by strong cues from global benchmarks. "Wall Street's major indices increased by more than 2 per cent on Friday as payrolls for December increased more than anticipated despite slower wage growth and weaker services activity," said Ameya Ranadive, Equity research analyst at Choice Broking.

At the time of writing this report, Sensex traded at 60,668.80 points, up 768.43 points or 1.28 per cent, whereas Nifty traded at 18,078.75 points, up 219.30 points or 1.23 per cent. Among the Nifty sectoral indices, barring Nifty consumer durables, all others were in the green with Nifty IT leading the pack.

Nifty IT rose over 2 per cent. "The US economic data released on Friday is significant from the global market perspective. All data point to a strong but cooling US economy which indicates the rising possibility of a soft landing for the US economy," said V K Vijayakumar, chief investment strategist at Geojit Financial Services.

"The December jobs increase was 223000, the lowest in 2 years. The hourly wage increase slowed to 4.6 per cent against the recent peak of 5.6 per cent. All these point to cooling inflation and the possibility of the Fed going less hawkish in 2023," Vijayakumar said.

The US Federal Reserve recently raised interest rates by 50 basis points (bps). The central bank's policy rate is now in a target range of 4.25-4.50 per cent, the highest level in 15 years. It was near zero in the early part of 2022.

Prior to the recent 50 basis-point hike, there had been a fourth consecutive hike of 75 basis points magnitude. For India, Vijayakumar of Geojit Financial Services said the sustained selling of stocks by foreign institutional investors (FIIs) has been a concern and advised investors to watch out for data.

So far, in January, foreign investors sold Rs 5,872 crore worth of equities in India, National Securities Depository (NSDL) data revealed. In 2022, they sold Rs 121,439 crore worth of assets on a cumulative basis.