The Reserve Bank of India's monetary policy committee (MPC) maintained a status quo for the tenth consecutive time on Wednesday and continued to maintain an ‘accommodative’ stance to help revive the economy. The policy repo rate was kept unchanged at 4%, while the reverse repo rate remained unchanged at 3.35%.
Following the RBI policy announcement, the BSE Sensex reversed early losses and rebounded more than 400 points to trade at 58,875. Rate sensitive stocks, including banks, real estate and automobiles, were trading mostly higher as the MPC voted unanimously to keep policy repo rate unchanged and retained an accommodative stance. The BSE bankex, the BSE realty and the BSE auto index gained up to 1.2% following the policy announcement.
"RBI has again voted for growth by continuing the accommodative stance and retaining the current repo and reverse repo rates. Even though this might invite criticism of the central bank being behind the curve, the RBI governor has categorically communicated that continued policy support is warranted for a durable and broad-based recovery. This clear pro-growth stance is desirable at the current juncture,” says V K Vijayakumar, chief investment strategist at Geojit Financial Services.
“Market has responded positively to the policy as of now with banking stocks exhibiting strength. However, the short- to medium-term trend of the market is likely to be influenced by the inflation data in the U.S. expected late tonight," he added.
Here’s how rate sensitive stocks reacted to RBI policy announcement:
The BSE bankex index was the best performer on the sectoral front with a 1.17% gain. The top gainers in the banking space were HDFC Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, State Bank of India, Bank of Baroda and Axis Bank.
HDFC Bank was the best performer on the BSE Sensex pack with a 1.82%. The private sector lender’s shares have been gaining for the past two sessions and have risen 4% during this period.
Realty space also witnessed buying activities with the BSE realty index trading 0.73% higher, led by Sobha, DLF, Godrej Properties, Oberoi Realty and Lodha Group (Macrotech Developers).
Meanwhile, the BSE auto index traded flat with marginal losses as gains in Tata Motors, M&M, TVS Motors and Eicher Motors were offset by losses in Bajaj Auto, Ashok Leyland, Hero MotoCorp and Maruti Suzuki India.
