Sensex zooms 1,030 points, Nifty tops 14,950 at closing

PTI, Feb 24, 2021, 6:03 PM IST

Mumbai: Equity benchmark Sensex soared 1,030.28 points and the Nifty rallied over 270 points on Wednesday, tracking strong buying in financial stocks, after trading hours were extended following a technical glitch at NSE.

After resumption of trade at 3.45 pm, NSE Nifty zoomed 274.20 points or 1.86 per cent to end at 14,982.

Similarly, the 30-share BSE index settled 1,030.28 points or 2.07 per cent higher at 50,781.69.

Axis Bank was the top gainer in the Sensex pack, surging around 5 per cent, followed by HDFC twins, ICICI Bank, Bajaj Finance and SBI.

On the other hand, PowerGrid, Dr Reddy’s, TCS and Asian Paints were among the laggards. Minutes before the scheduled closure of trade at 3.30 pm, leading bourses BSE and NSE said their equity and derivatives markets will remain open till 5 pm.

The move came after the National Stock Exchange (NSE) suffered an outage earlier in the day due to technical glitches. Trading across segments came to a halt at 1140 hrs due to connectivity issues.

However, the broader Indian markets were not impacted as communication lines at BSE remained operational.

“A late surge by bulls across financials post lifting of the embargo on the grant of GOI business to private banks took indices up 2 per cent when trade time was extended till 5.00 pm,” said S Ranganathan, Head of Research at LKP Securities.

Elsewhere in Asia, bourses in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Seoul and Tokyo ended on a negative note.

Stock exchanges in Europe, however, were trading with gains in mid-session deals.

Meanwhile, the global oil benchmark Brent crude was trading 0.96 per cent higher at USD 65.10 per barrel.

In the forex market, the rupee gained 11 paise to settle at 72.35 against the US dollar supported by positive domestic equities and weakness of the American currency in the overseas market.