Kamal Ghorui
Stock market today: Indian equity benchmarks are slowly inching upwards, with Nifty50 and BSE Sensex opening in green after three days of gains. While Nifty50 was above 25,850 in early trade, BSE Sensex rose over 100 points. At 9:18 AM, Nifty50 was trading at 25,861.55, up 42 points or 0.16%. BSE Sensex was at 83,854.33, up 120 points or 0.14%.Stock markets extended gains for the third straight session on Wednesday amidst improving global cues and sector-specific domestic developments that are supporting sentiment. Market experts expect markets to remain firm with an upward bias, guided by global cues and domestic sector-specific developments.Dr. VK Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist, Geojit Investments Limited says, “An important takeaway from Q3 results is the comeback of the mid and smallcaps. Improvement in earnings recovery and indications of continuation of this uptrend have brought the mid and smallcaps back to the radar of investors. At the institutional level, there is a trend of selective accumulation of mid and smallcaps. Even mutual funds which had flagged the valuation concerns of the mid and smallcaps have started approaching the segment with optimism.”“However, even now, largecaps have valuation comfort while mid and smallcaps are trading at much higher valuations. Nifty is trading at around 20 times FY27 estimated earnings while the NSE midcap and NSE smallcap indexes are trading at 28 and 24 times estimated FY27 earnings. This makes this market a stock picker’s market. Prospects for financials, autos, capital goods, pharmaceuticals and hotels look good.”Wall Street finished in the green, led by a rise in major technology stocks such as Nvidia and Amazon after recent volatility linked to artificial intelligence concerns. Nvidia gained 1.6% after announcing a multi-year agreement to supply millions of its current-generation chips to Meta Platforms.Asian markets also moved higher following the rebound in technology shares and strong US economic data, which boosted investor confidence. Oil prices retained gains after registering their sharpest rise since October.The US dollar steadied on Thursday, holding on to recent gains after minutes from the Federal Reserve indicated policymakers were not in a hurry to lower interest rates and that some remained open to rate hikes if inflation persists.Foreign portfolio investors were net buyers of equities worth Rs 1,154 crore on Wednesday, while domestic institutional investors purchased shares worth Rs 440 crore.(Disclaimer: Recommendations and views on the stock market, other asset classes or personal finance management tips given by experts are their own. These opinions do not represent the views of The Times of India)
