Market snaps 7-session losing streak, surges 1,000 pts despite RBI rate hike

Breaking the seven-session losing streak, the Indian equities benchmarks ended higher on Friday despite rate hike by the Reserve Bank of India, which was in line with market expectations. The 30-share BSE Sensex surged as much as 1,300 points intraday, whereas the Nifty 50 index reclaimed the psychologically 17,000 mark. The sharp rally in the market led to the addition of Rs 3.72 lakh crore in the equity investors' wealth.

Paring some of early gains, the BSE Sensex ended 1,016 points, or 1.80%, higher at 57,427, and the Nifty50 index climbed 276 points, or 1.64%, to 17,094. While all the sectoral indices witnessed buying throughout the day, the rate-sensitive banking, metal, financial services, and real estate stocks gained the most. 

In the closing trade, amongst the banking stocks, Kotak Bank led the pack by surging 3.22%, followed by HDFC Bank, Axis Bank, and ICIC Bank respectively, which rose up to 3%. 

On the Sensex pack, Bharti Airtel, IndusInd Bank, Bajaj Finance, Titan, HDFC Bank, Kotak Bank, Bajaj Finserv, and Tata Steel were among the top gainers, whereas Hindustan Unilever Limited, Tech Mahindra, ITC, Dr.Reddy and Asian Paints were the top losers. 

Meanwhile, the rupee settled 37 paise higher at 81.36 against the U.S. dollar after the RBI raised the interest rate. During the session, the domestic currency hit an intraday-high of 81.17 and the intraday-low of 81.69. 

On Friday, the domestic institutional investors were the top buyers, buying assets worth ₹3,161 crore, whereas the foreign institutional investors remained the top losers by selling assets worth ₹3,599 crore. 

The central bank, after a three-day monetary policy meet, hiked the key repo rate by 50 basis points (bps) at 5.9% in order to curtail inflation, which remained above RBI’s tolerance level of 6% for the first eight months of 2022. The RBI MPC has also retained the inflation forecast for FY23 at 6.7% amid upside risks to food prices.